Re: [Bitcoin-development] replace-by-fee v0.10.0rc4

[Mark Friedenbach <mark@friedenbach.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6509 bytes --]

Thank you Jorge for the contribution of the Stag Hunt terminology. It is
much better than a politically charged "scorched earth".
On Feb 21, 2015 11:10 AM, "Jorge Timón" <jtimon@jtimon.cc> wrote:

> I agree "scorched hearth" is a really bad name for the 0 conf protocol
> based on game theory. I would have preferred "stag hunt" since that's
> basically what it's using (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_hunt)
> but I like the protocol and I think it would be interesting to
> integrate it in the  payment protocol.
> Even if that protocol didn't existed or didn't worked, replace-by-fee
> is purely part of a node's policy, not part of consensus.
> >From the whitepaper, 0 conf transactions being secure by the good will
> of miners was never an assumption, and it is clear to me that the
> system cannot provide those guaranties based on such a weak scheme. I
> believe thinking otherwise is naive.
> As to consider non-standard policies "an attack to bitcoin" because
> "that's not how bitcoin used to work", then I guess minimum relay fee
> policies can also be considered "an attack to bitcoin" on the same
> grounds.
> Lastly, "first-seen-wins" was just a simple policy to bootstrap the
> system, but I expect that most nodes will eventually move to policies
> that are economically rational for miners such as replace-by-fee.
> Not only I disagree this will be "the end of bitcoin" or "will push
> the price of the btc miners are mining down", I believe it will be
> something good for bitcoin.
> Since this is apparently controversial I don't want to push for
> replace-by-fee to become the new standard policy (something that would
> make sense to me). But once the policy code is sufficiently modular as
> to support several policies I would like bitcoin core to have a
> CReplaceByFeePolicy alongside CStandardPolicy and a CNullPolicy (no
> policy checks at all).
> One step at a time I guess...
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 9:56 AM, Troy Benjegerdes <hozer@hozed.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 11:40:24PM +0200, Adam Gibson wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On 02/15/2015 11:25 PM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Most money/payment systems include some method to reverse or undo
> >> > payments made in error. In these systems, the longer settlement
> >> > times you mention below are a feature, not a bug, and give more
> >> > time for a human to react to errors and system failures.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Settlement has to be final somewhere. That is the whole point of it.
> >> Transfer costs in current electronic payment systems are a direct
> >> consequence of their non-finality. That's the point Satoshi was making
> >> in the introduction to the whitepaper: "With the possibility of
> >> reversal, the need for trust spreads".
> >
> > The problem with that statement is I trust a merchant that I went into
> > a store and made a payment with personally more than I trust the firmware
> > on my hard drive [1].
> >
> > The attack surface of devices in your computer is huge. A motivated
> attacker
> > just needs to get an intern into a company that makes some kind of
> component
> > or system that's in your computer, cloud server, hardware wallet, or what
> > have you that has firmware capable of reading your private keys.
> >
> > With the possibility of mass trojaned hardware, if we are going to trust
> > the system, it must somehow allow reversal through a human-in-the-loop.
> >
> >> There is nothing wrong with having reversible mechanisms built on top
> >> of Bitcoin, and indeed it makes sense for most activity to happen at
> >> those higher layers. It's easy to build things that way, but
> >> impossible to build them the other way: you can't build a
> >> non-reversible layer on top of a reversible layer.
> >
> > We built 'reliable' TCP on top of unreliable ethernet networks. My
> experience
> > with networking was if you tried to guarantee message delivery at the
> lowest
> > level, the system got exceedingly complicated, expensive, and brittle.
> >
> > Most applications, in particular paying someone you already trust, are
> quite
> > happy running on reversible systems, and in some cases more reliable and
> > lower risk. (carrying non-reversible cash is generally considered risky)
> >
> > The problem is that if the base currency is assumed to be non-reversible,
> > then it's brittle and becomes 'too big to fail'.
> >
> > Where the blockchain improves on everything else is in transparency. If
> you
> > reverse transactions a lot, it will be obvious from an analysis. I would
> much
> > rather deal with a known, predictable, and relatively continous
> transaction
> > reversal rate (percentage) than have to deal with sudden failures where
> > some anonymous bad actor makes off with a fortune.
> >
> > We already have zero-conf double-spend transaction reversal, why not
> explicitly
> > extend that a little in a way that senders and receivers have a choice to
> > use it, or not?
> >
> >
> > [1]
> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/16/us-usa-cyberspying-idUSKBN0LK1QV20150216
> >
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server
> > from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards
> > with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more
> > Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE
> >
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=190641631&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bitcoin-development mailing list
> > Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server
> from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards
> with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more
> Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE
>
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=190641631&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 8120 bytes --]