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[60.240.212.53]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPSA id b6sm8495645igm.2.2014.04.25.06.20.06 for (version=TLSv1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Fri, 25 Apr 2014 06:20:07 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <535A60FE.10209@gmail.com> Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 23:19:58 +1000 From: Gareth Williams User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bitcoin Dev References: <5359E509.4080907@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.6 OpenPGP: id=378E4544 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="lbxH9cQ8EhJ0rR3q6pruIae9ejvAcSlm0" X-Spam-Score: -1.6 (-) X-Spam-Report: Spam Filtering performed by mx.sourceforge.net. See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details. -1.5 SPF_CHECK_PASS SPF reports sender host as permitted sender for sender-domain 0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail provider (gacrux[at]gmail.com) -0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record -0.1 DKIM_VALID_AU Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from author's domain 0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid -0.1 DKIM_VALID Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature X-Headers-End: 1Wdg33-00014r-UN Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Coinbase reallocation to discourage Finney attacks X-BeenThere: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 13:20:15 -0000 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156) --lbxH9cQ8EhJ0rR3q6pruIae9ejvAcSlm0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 25/04/14 20:17, Mike Hearn wrote: > Proving that you can convince the economic majority that the >=20 > interpretation of existing blocks is in any way up for grabs would = set a > dangerous precedent, and shake some people's faith in Bitcoin's ove= rall > robustness and security (well, mine anyway.) >=20 >=20 > Hmm, then I think your faith needs to be shaken. Bitcoin is money, and= > money is a purely artificial social construct. The interpretation of > what a bitcoin means, or what a dollar means, has always been and alway= s > will be a human decision taken in order to achieve some socially useful= > goal.=20 My argument does not concern what a bitcoin means, just what data in the blockchain means. People are free to value an individual bitcoin however they like. But it's useful if we all agree on a standard that defines who owns them - ie. the protocol as described in Satoshi's whitepaper. I recognise that your ability to provide a valid scriptSig for /any existing UTXO in the blockchain/ as proof of your ownership of the corresponding bitcoin. You want to pick and choose which UTXO (well, coinbase; same diff) you consider valid and spendable /after they've become part of the blockchain/, regardless of the fact they're buried under PoW. As an illustration, consider Counterparty - an altcoin whose TXns are embedded as unvalidated data in the bitcoin blockchain. A lot of people imagine that an XCP transaction buried under 100 blocks and a BTC transaction buried under the same 100 blocks are equally secure. You tell me: are they? It's the same PoW chain after all. Hell no they're not! The way Counterparty interprets that data in the blockchain is anything but stable or well documented. On more than one occasion they've gone "whoops, found a bug that caused some transactions to occur that we don't consider valid - we'll just fix that." A suddenly the reference client doesn't consider the XCP in your wallet valid anymore - they just magically disappear - because the parent of the TXn that paid you was actually invalid. Nobody rewrote history via PoW; they simply tweaked their interpretation of the existing history. When you have a *bitcoin* TXn buried under 100 blocks you can be damn sure that money is yours - but only because the rules for interpreting data in the blockchain are publicly documented and (hopefully) immutable. If they're mutable then the PoW alone gives me no confidence that the money is really mine, and we're left with a much less useful system. This should be more sacred than the 21m limit. --lbxH9cQ8EhJ0rR3q6pruIae9ejvAcSlm0 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJTWmD+AAoJEEY5w2E3jkVEWVUH/1kgJ4cWzknDjgE8/1RlTZo+ HTp0NbVjqtPC54rjKCbcOPa4TQ67Wd5wKphNQRX1aCHWDvks0BeeF3iQvH7aUUG7 mYr0FOntRp1aYLFq8oKqEcW5VsjDR4rjO+FOhreBw8iCrlVUOXra2lkMZaChFq89 7G79tlHzBVjTUXxj/xqYpd01crk3XD2UN/r27oMKMeqmwpX7yVT3MVs5tRDUpCHx RPBrBnGhcOnzexDQIbENMAqb7Bb2nxKUBlAITNyF9AxddlCe7Pa4v9+KOXu2FztI j1gYojIEKhntGXx0QBvTNk6JeMFBoXeGx+WJoVyCYZBO+hC7/qkzcftApbXGBXE= =iiXD -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --lbxH9cQ8EhJ0rR3q6pruIae9ejvAcSlm0--