Author: Gregory Maxwell 2015-01-09 13:26:14
Published on: 2015-01-09T13:26:14+00:00
In an email conversation between Mike Hearn and an unknown recipient on January 9, 2015, Hearn discussed a limitation on most existing micropayment channel ideas, stating that payments can only flow in one direction. However, he noted that the original protocol as designed by Satoshi did not have this limitation, but it has evolved this way because of ad-hoc DoS fixes over time. Hearn suggested that eventually, a different approach to handling DoS attacks based on resource prioritization and scheduling will become needed or implemented, allowing the original design to be safely brought back to life.The unknown recipient disagreed with Hearn's understanding, stating that expecting replacement to work and be enforced is completely unsafe. They added that people refuse to use protocols that are broken by refund malleability, which is a much narrower expectation for miners than expecting the sequence ratchet to go one way. No further information was provided on the context or purpose of the email exchange.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T19:39:37.400324+00:00