Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP: Voluntary deposit bonds

[Stephen Morse <stephencalebmorse@gmail.com>]

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I agree with Gregory Maxwell, I don't think it would be as easy as just
changing IsCoinBase(), since there are places where the code assumes that
the coinbase's vin doesn't spend any prevouts and/or has size 1. For
example, here
<https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.9.3/src/main.cpp#L617-620> and
here <https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.9.3/src/main.cpp#L785-L808>
.

I think the motivation behind the original suggestion is to have a way to
pay specific miners upon solving a block without risking possibly paying
other miners through pay-to-fee. What I'm not sure about, though, is why
not just send them a transaction once you see that the miner has solved a
block? Not a pay-to-fee transaction, a pay to pubkeyhash or whatever type
of transaction you need to make to send the miner some coins.

Although I don't completely understand the motivation for making such
transactions, maybe this would this work. Have outputs in the coinbase
transaction which have nValue == 0, then only apply the COINBASE_MATURITY
rule to spending coinbase outputs which have non-zero value. That way you
could make a transactions which is only valid after the miner specified
solves a block with the coinbase having the same TxID referenced by the new
transaction's input. It's still a hard fork, but might be easier than
allowing the coinbase to spend prevouts. I guess, at that point though, why
not just hard fork to allow the coinbase to spend prevouts...

Best,
Stephen

On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 1:28 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 4:25 PM, Sergio Lerner
> <sergiolerner@certimix.com> wrote:
> > Slight off-topic:
> > That looks like an abuse of the VM. Even P2SH is an abuse of the VM.
> > Gavin's OP_EVAL (hard-fork) should had been chosen. I'm taking about a
> > simple change that goes along the lines of Satoshi's original design.
> > Bitcoin was a beautiful design, and extra complexity is making it ugly.
> > We need Bitcoin to be simple to understand for new programmers so they
> > can keep the project going. It doesn't help the project that one needs
> > to be a guru to code for Bitcoin.
>
> Sergio there is no "abuse" there,  OP_NOP3 in that case would be
> redefined to OP_COINBASE_FOO_CONSISTENCY.
>
> (I say FOO because it's not clear what rule you actually hope to apply
> there.)
>
> What you suggested has no purpose by itself: it would need an
> additional change which overlays functionality in order to actually do
> something. Such a change would likely be "ugly"-- it's easy to be
> elegant when you do nothing.
>
>
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