Author: Mark Friedenbach 2014-06-17 22:28:36
Published on: 2014-06-17T22:28:36+00:00
There are mechanisms in which a digital signature can reveal the private key and allow someone to steal coins, but they are not very safe to use. For example, accidentally loading the same wallet on two machines or the wallet software crashing after signing and sending a transaction could lead to theft. This system also invalidates legitimate use cases for repeating addresses and it is not possible to prevent people from sending multiple coins to the same address. A user asked if two signed transactions using the same output as an input could trigger a third transaction. They proposed signing a transaction that would pay a certain amount of bitcoins to an arbitrary address if someone presented proof of more than one transaction using the same output. This feature was previously used in Digicash by Chaum, where a double spend would let the second merchant compute the identity of the double spender and serve as proof of double spending, but it did not automate punishment.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T00:11:56.060236+00:00