Fwd: Hiding entire content of on-chain transactions



Summary:

In an email thread from 2016, James MacWhyte discusses the potential need for verification by miners to protect against duplicate spends and a troll named Timothy. In the scenario presented, Alice sends Bob a transaction, which generates an output labeled as C. Timothy then broadcasts a transaction with a random hash that references C's output as its spend proof. The miners are unable to verify if this is valid or not and include it in a block. As a result, Bob's money becomes useless because others can see the referenced spend proof and believe it has already been spent even though the transaction claiming it isn't valid. A duplicate spend proof must be signed by the same user (Alice) to be considered a double spend.


Updated on: 2023-06-11T19:34:40.821561+00:00