I'll add fuel to the fire here, and express that I believe that
replace-by-fee is good in the long-term. Peter is not breaking the
zero-conf, it was already broken, and not admitting it creates a
false sense of security. I don't want to see systems that are built
on the assumption that zero-conf tx are safe solely because it has
always appeared safe. You can argue about rational miner behaviors
all day, but in a decentralized system you have no idea what miners
consider rational, or speculate about their incentives.
If there's one thing I learned playing poker (many years ago), was
that always assuming your opponent is rational can lose you a lot of
money. You made play that, in hindsight, was terrible given what he
actually had. But you assumed no sane or rational person in his
position would make such a play so you discounted it in your
decision-making process. You're "right" that his actions were
terrible and irrational, but he still won your money because you
discounted his ability to make such a "bad" play. Here, you are
speculating that an "opponent" uses the same
values/motivations/rationality as yourself, and then building
systems that depend on that being true. Even if it "should" be true
doesn't mean that it is true and will remain that way. And you will
get burned by it eventually.
The Bitcoin network achieves something that we didnt' think was
possible 10 years ago: a totally trustless, decentralized ledger.
The cost? It takes time for the decentralized network to reach
consensus that transactions "happened". That is quite literally the
trade-off that we make: you can centralize things by putting a bank
in the middle and getting instant confirmation, or you decentralize
and let the network reach consensus over time without the central
authority. If you want instant confirmations, you're going to need
to add centralization because Bitcoin never offered it. I support
efforts to dispel any such myths as soon as possible and encourage
building robust solutions (payment channels, insured zero-conf
services, etc.).
-Alan
On 02/12/2015 07:37 PM, Allen Piscitello wrote:
> You cannot close Pandora's
box. Whether or not this type of patch should exist is
irrelevant. It does, and there are incentives to use it by
miners. These are the bounds we have to deal with and the world
we must adapt to.
>
> On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Justus Ranvier
<justusranvier@riseup.net
<mailto:justusranvier@riseup.net>> wrote:
>
On 02/12/2015 05:24 PM, Oleg Andreev wrote:
>> I think that is a misdirection on your part. The point of
>> replace-by-fee is to make 0-confirms reliably unreliable.
>> Currently people can "get away" with 0-confirms but it's
only
>> because most people arent actively double spending, and
when they
>> do it is for higher value targets. Double spend attacks
are
>> happening a lot more frequently than is being admitted
here,
>> according to Peter from work with various clients.
>>
>> Like single address reuse, people have gotten used to
something
>> which is bad. Generally accepting 0-conf is also a bad
idea(tm)
>> and instant confirmation solutions should be sought
elsewhere.
>> There are already interesting solutions and concepts:
>> greenaddress for example, and CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY
micropayment
>> channels for example. Rather than supporting and
promoting risky
>> 0-confirms, we need to spend time on better alternative
solutions
>> that will work for everyone and not during the honeymoon
phase
>> where attackers are fewer.
> Here's value-free assessment of the issue here:
> 1. Zero-conf txs are unsafe. 2. We'd all want to have a safer
> instant payments solution if possible. 3. As a social
artifact,
> today zeroconf txs happen to work for some people in some
> situations. 4. Replace-by-fee will break #3 and probably
hasten
> development of #2.
> The discussion boils down to whether we should make #2 happen
> sooner by breaking remnants of #3 sooner.
> I personally would rather not break anything, but work as
fast as
> possible on #2 so no matter when and how #3 becomes utterly
broken,
> we have a better solution. This implies that I also don't
want to
> waste time debating with Peter Todd and others. I want to be
ready
> with a working tool when zeroconf completely fails (with that
patch
> or for some other reasons).
> TL;DR: those who are against the patch are better off
building a
> decentralized clearing network rather than wasting time on
debates.
> When we have such network, we might all want this patch to be
used
> for all the reasons Peter has already outlined.
You've left out of the discussion that many (or all) proposed
solutions for 2 either reduce privacy, or security, or both.
That fact should not be ignored or swept under the rug.
There's also no mention of the degree to which
child-pays-for-parent
achieves the stated aims of the original proposal (clearing
mempool of
stuck transactions, increasing payee assurance of conformation)
without introducing incentives to double spend or forcing people
into
privacy/security sacrifices.
>
>
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