Author: Peter Todd 2015-02-12 20:06:29
Published on: 2015-02-12T20:06:29+00:00
In a message from 2015, Alan Reiner discussed the trade-off of decentralization in the Bitcoin network. While the network achieves a completely trustless ledger, it takes time for the decentralized network to reach consensus on transactions. The only alternative to this is centralization, which allows for instant confirmation through a bank or other central authority. To dispel myths surrounding Bitcoin's lack of instant confirmations, Reiner suggests building robust solutions such as payment channels and insured zero-conf services. In addition, he proposes that wallets support replace-by-fee-using fee-bumping and an "attempt undo" button to help dispel these notions. Armory is mentioned as an exception due to its full node and privacy guarantees, but most wallets could implement this easily by sending doublespend transactions to nodes advertising either the replace-by-fee or GETUTXO's service bits.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T16:59:14.705779+00:00