Author: Gregory Maxwell 2013-06-27 16:13:58
Published on: 2013-06-27T16:13:58+00:00
In an email conversation from June 27, 2013, Arthur Gervais discusses the issue of double-spending in Bitcoin transactions. He believes that his reported problem is complementary to other issues affecting the same Bitcoin version, as it has nothing to do with fees or dust and does not require sending the two double-spending transactions at the same time. In fact, double-spending still works if the second transaction is sent minutes later, before the first has been included in a block. This applies to any case of a non-standard transaction being used to achieve inconsistent forwarding.Gervais's intention is to raise awareness among merchants who accept zero-confirmation transactions. However, there is concern that his focus on signature encoding differences may create a misunderstanding. The issue of mining and relay behavior inhomogeneity always exists in the network, and the level of inhomogeneity changes over time. It is greatest when new reference client software changes IsStandard, but it is never zero. Large miners with customized acceptance rules and mempool state also contribute to inhomogeneity. The greater the inhomogeneity, the higher the success rates for double-spending, which may be important for some services that could only be profitably exploited with a high enough success rate.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T17:03:49.457437+00:00