Author: Adam Back 2015-02-22 08:02:03
Published on: 2015-02-22T08:02:03+00:00
The discussion is about 0-confirm transactions in Bitcoin, which are fast but not entirely secure. There is a small chance that 1-confirm transactions can be reversed, and an even more usable chance that 0-confirms can be reversed. However, 0-confirm transactions provide fast transactions, and much of the current ecosystem is using them for low-value transactions. There is concern that if we have someone who wants to go for it with high values, Bitcoin would already be broken. Therefore, instead of vandalizing 0-confirm transactions, a new signature type could be introduced that marks itself as can be spent by miners if a double-spend is seen before 1-confirm. The risk to the sender is if they accidentally double-spend, which could happen by having hardware or software crashes where they send a transaction but crash before writing a record of having sent it. This feature is opt-in so you don't have to put high-value coins at risk of failure. It's soft-forkable because it's a new transaction type. Longer-term more scalable solutions are interesting, but the core network should work as a stepping stone.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T17:39:39.109115+00:00