<p dir="ltr">Thank you Jorge for the contribution of the Stag Hunt terminology. It is much better than a politically charged "scorched earth".</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 21, 2015 11:10 AM, "Jorge Timón" <jtimon@jtimon.cc> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I agree "scorched hearth" is a really bad name for the 0 conf protocol<br>
based on game theory. I would have preferred "stag hunt" since that's<br>
basically what it's using (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_hunt" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_hunt</a>)<br>
but I like the protocol and I think it would be interesting to<br>
integrate it in the payment protocol.<br>
Even if that protocol didn't existed or didn't worked, replace-by-fee<br>
is purely part of a node's policy, not part of consensus.<br>
>From the whitepaper, 0 conf transactions being secure by the good will<br>
of miners was never an assumption, and it is clear to me that the<br>
system cannot provide those guaranties based on such a weak scheme. I<br>
believe thinking otherwise is naive.<br>
As to consider non-standard policies "an attack to bitcoin" because<br>
"that's not how bitcoin used to work", then I guess minimum relay fee<br>
policies can also be considered "an attack to bitcoin" on the same<br>
grounds.<br>
Lastly, "first-seen-wins" was just a simple policy to bootstrap the<br>
system, but I expect that most nodes will eventually move to policies<br>
that are economically rational for miners such as replace-by-fee.<br>
Not only I disagree this will be "the end of bitcoin" or "will push<br>
the price of the btc miners are mining down", I believe it will be<br>
something good for bitcoin.<br>
Since this is apparently controversial I don't want to push for<br>
replace-by-fee to become the new standard policy (something that would<br>
make sense to me). But once the policy code is sufficiently modular as<br>
to support several policies I would like bitcoin core to have a<br>
CReplaceByFeePolicy alongside CStandardPolicy and a CNullPolicy (no<br>
policy checks at all).<br>
One step at a time I guess...<br>
<br>
<br>
On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 9:56 AM, Troy Benjegerdes <<a href="mailto:hozer@hozed.org">hozer@hozed.org</a>> wrote:<br>
> On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 11:40:24PM +0200, Adam Gibson wrote:<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> On 02/15/2015 11:25 PM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:<br>
>> ><br>
>> > Most money/payment systems include some method to reverse or undo<br>
>> > payments made in error. In these systems, the longer settlement<br>
>> > times you mention below are a feature, not a bug, and give more<br>
>> > time for a human to react to errors and system failures.<br>
>> ><br>
>><br>
>> Settlement has to be final somewhere. That is the whole point of it.<br>
>> Transfer costs in current electronic payment systems are a direct<br>
>> consequence of their non-finality. That's the point Satoshi was making<br>
>> in the introduction to the whitepaper: "With the possibility of<br>
>> reversal, the need for trust spreads".<br>
><br>
> The problem with that statement is I trust a merchant that I went into<br>
> a store and made a payment with personally more than I trust the firmware<br>
> on my hard drive [1].<br>
><br>
> The attack surface of devices in your computer is huge. A motivated attacker<br>
> just needs to get an intern into a company that makes some kind of component<br>
> or system that's in your computer, cloud server, hardware wallet, or what<br>
> have you that has firmware capable of reading your private keys.<br>
><br>
> With the possibility of mass trojaned hardware, if we are going to trust<br>
> the system, it must somehow allow reversal through a human-in-the-loop.<br>
><br>
>> There is nothing wrong with having reversible mechanisms built on top<br>
>> of Bitcoin, and indeed it makes sense for most activity to happen at<br>
>> those higher layers. It's easy to build things that way, but<br>
>> impossible to build them the other way: you can't build a<br>
>> non-reversible layer on top of a reversible layer.<br>
><br>
> We built 'reliable' TCP on top of unreliable ethernet networks. My experience<br>
> with networking was if you tried to guarantee message delivery at the lowest<br>
> level, the system got exceedingly complicated, expensive, and brittle.<br>
><br>
> Most applications, in particular paying someone you already trust, are quite<br>
> happy running on reversible systems, and in some cases more reliable and<br>
> lower risk. (carrying non-reversible cash is generally considered risky)<br>
><br>
> The problem is that if the base currency is assumed to be non-reversible,<br>
> then it's brittle and becomes 'too big to fail'.<br>
><br>
> Where the blockchain improves on everything else is in transparency. If you<br>
> reverse transactions a lot, it will be obvious from an analysis. I would much<br>
> rather deal with a known, predictable, and relatively continous transaction<br>
> reversal rate (percentage) than have to deal with sudden failures where<br>
> some anonymous bad actor makes off with a fortune.<br>
><br>
> We already have zero-conf double-spend transaction reversal, why not explicitly<br>
> extend that a little in a way that senders and receivers have a choice to<br>
> use it, or not?<br>
><br>
><br>
> [1] <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/16/us-usa-cyberspying-idUSKBN0LK1QV20150216" target="_blank">http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/16/us-usa-cyberspying-idUSKBN0LK1QV20150216</a><br>
><br>
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