[Bitcoin-development] deterministic transaction expiration

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 8:26 PM, Matt Whitlock <bip at mattwhitlock.name> wrote:
> I understand what you're saying, but I don't understand why it's a problem. Transactions shouldn't be considered "final" until a reasonable number of confirmations anyway, so the possibility that an "accepted" transaction could become invalid due to a chain reorganization is not a new danger. Ordinary transactions can similarly become invalid due to chain reorganizations, due to inputs already having been spent in the new branch.

A distinction there is that they can only become invalid via a
conflict— replaced by another transaction authored by the prior
signers. If no other transaction could be created (e.g. you're a
multisigner and won't sign it again) then there is no such risk.  It
now introduces chance events ("act of god") into the mix where they
they didn't exist before.  Basically it takes was what is a very loose
one way coupling and makes it much tighter. I'm sure if you spend a
bit thinking you can come up with some more corner cases that it would
expose— e.g. flooding the network with unrelated high fee transactions
in order to push a transaction out to where it can never be mined at
all.