Author: Gregory Maxwell 2013-08-23 06:55:32
Published on: 2013-08-23T06:55:32+00:00
In an email conversation from 2013, Maciej Trebacz proposed adding a feature to Bitcoin that would allow for multiple addresses to be signed with a single private key and include the signature in a transaction. This would be useful for reputable wallet services to issue transactions that require zero confirmations from the other party, as they know that the transaction is coming from a trusted source that won't try to double spend. However, this proposal was met with resistance from another party in the conversation who believed it was highly undesirable due to the privacy implications it would have on Bitcoin users. The second party argued that adding such a feature would increase the size of transactions and transaction fees while forcing other parties to spend effort transmitting, processing, and storing it for all time. More importantly, this would leak the identity of one of the parties in the transaction to the whole world, which lowers the privacy of everyone involved. Privacy in Bitcoin is based exclusively on using pseudonymous identities on every transaction, and breaking that would remove its competitive advantage over centralized payment systems. Instead, the second party suggested performing the transaction using the payment protocol, which could provide additional metadata and signatures from relevant parties without compromising privacy. Alternatively, simply giving the user a signmessaged txid can show a promise to pay for a transaction without highly public communication.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T17:30:11.649016+00:00