Re: [bitcoin-dev] Committed bloom filters for improved wallet performance and SPV security

[Jonas Schnelli <dev@jonasschnelli.ch>]

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Hi

> Unconfirmed transactions are incredibly important for real world use.
> Merchants for instance are willing to accept credit card payments of
> thousands of dollars and ship the goods despite the fact that the
> transaction can be reversed up to 60 days later. There is a very large
> cost to losing the ability to have instant transactions in many or
> even most situations. This cost is typically well above the fraud risk. 
>
> It's important to recognize that bitcoin serves a wide variety of use
> cases with different profiles for time sensitivity and fraud risk.
>
I agree that unconfirmed transactions are incredibly important, but not
over SPV against random peers.

If you offer users/merchants a feature (SPV 0-conf against random
peers), that is fundamentally insecure, it will – sooner or later – lead
to some large scale fiasco, hurting Bitcoins reputation and trust from
merchants.

Merchants using and trusting 0-conf SPV transactions (retrieved from
random peers) is something we should **really eliminate** through
education and by offering different solution.

There are plenty, more sane options. If you can't run your own full-node
as a merchant (trivial), maybe co-use a wallet-service with centralized
verification (maybe use two of them), I guess Copay would be one of
those wallets (as an example). Use them in watch-only mode.

For end-users SPV software, I think it would be recommended to...
... disable unconfirmed transactions during SPV against random peers
... enable unconfirmed transactions when using SPV against a trusted
peer with preshared keys after BIP150
... if unconfirmed transactions are disabled, show how it can be enabled
(how to run a full-node [in a box, etc.])
... educate, inform users that a transaction with no confirmation can be
"stopped" or "redirected" any time, also inform about the risks during
low-conf phase (1-5).

I though see the point that it's nice to make use of the "incoming
funds..." feature in SPV wallets. But – for the sake of stability and
(risk-)scaling – we may want to recommend to scarify this feature and –
in the same turn – to use privacy-preserving BFD's.

</jonas>



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