Author: Chris Priest 2017-01-05 07:06:36
Published on: 2017-01-05T07:06:36+00:00
On January 3, 2017, Jonas Schnelli suggested a more practical approach for merchants who cannot run their own full-node. Instead, he recommended using a wallet-service with centralized verification or utilizing two of them, such as Copay. These services can be used in watch-only mode. To ensure the transaction's confirmation, Schnelli suggested connecting to the mempool of each miner and checking if they have the txid in their mempool using various APIs such as those provided by antpool.com, f2pool.com, bw.com, bitfury.com, and btcc.com. If all of these services return "True," and none engage in RBF, it is highly likely that the transaction will be confirmed shortly. However, if one returns "False," then there may be a double spend floating around, and waiting for confirmation would be necessary. The drawback to this method is that not every pool runs such a service to check the contents of their mempool. This is an example of how mining centralization increases zero confirm security, but its effectiveness depends on the number of people that mine. If more people mined, this method would require calling the API of hundreds of different potential block creators.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T05:00:28.859654+00:00