[Bitcoin-development] RFC: MERGE transaction/script/process for forked chains
Troy Benjegerdes
hozer at hozed.org
Tue Dec 17 22:41:30 UTC 2013
I want to get some feedback.. I've used distributed version control
systems for a long time, and the most useful feature is to be able
to merge two different forks.
So what's the equivalent of this for Bitcoin or other crypto-currencies?
Let's suppose that me and my friends get 'islanded' from the rest of
the internet for a week, but we still want to trade bitcoin. It would
work if there are local miners, until we reconnect.
Suppose we have the main chain (Alice), while bob is on a boat, trading
with some friends, but has no network connectivity.
When bob reconnects with Alice, a 'Merge' transaction happens where a
miner looks at bob's forked blockchain, sees no double-spends, and
includes BOTH chains.
Now suppose someone on bob's boat has a buggy client, or sent a
transaction before disconnect that results in a double-spend on the
merge.
So we have a merge conflict, which generally requires human interaction,
so bob and his friends broadcast a MERGE request with a transaction fee
sufficient to cover reconciling the double-spends, AND incentivize a
miner to do some extra work to merge.
Thoughts everyone?
-- Troy
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