Author: bfd at cock.lu 2017-01-04 00:10:14
Published on: 2017-01-04T00:10:14+00:00
A non-validating SPV wallet has no way of knowing if the unconfirmed transaction is anything but properly formatted. This is because they are connecting to an easily manipulated, sybil attacked, and untrusted network and then asking for financial information. Even light/SPV wallets show mempool transactions, which can make it hard to go back, but only a full node can tell if a transaction may get confirmed, or is nonsense. Unconfirmed transactions are incredibly important for real-world use cases, such as merchants who accept credit card payments despite the fact that the transaction can be reversed up to 60 days later. It is important to recognize that bitcoin serves a wide variety of use cases with different profiles for time sensitivity and fraud risk. Aaron Voisine, co-founder and CEO of breadwallet, suggested that if the sender doesn't control the receiver's network connection, then the information the receiver gains by watching the mempool is if the transaction has propagated across the bitcoin network, which is useful to know in all kinds of situations.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T04:59:48.433967+00:00