Author: Adam Back 2015-05-26 18:47:39
Published on: 2015-05-26T18:47:39+00:00
The discussion is about the security concerns related to a feature called 'Replace by Fee' (RBF) in Bitcoin. The concern is that fraudulent payment reversals could occur by broadcasting a double spend of the original transaction after receiving the goods and paying a higher network fee. Peter Todd argues that RBF is a more cost-effective way of paying fees compared to Child Pays For Parent (CPFP). He provides four cases where RBF can save transaction fees ranging from 48% to 90%. In Case 1, if a user forgets to click on the "priority fee" option, they can use RBF to rebroadcast the original transaction with the change address decreased, resulting in cost savings of 48%. In Case 2, if a user wants to pay multiple recipients, they can simply double-spend the original transaction using RBF, resulting in cost savings of 84%. In Case 3, when using a multisig wallet, defragmenting UTXOs can be expensive, but RBF can result in cost savings of 90%. In Case 4, for dust defragmentation, RBF can reduce transaction fees by 32% to 59%, or even more if defragmentation without RBF costs more than it saves. Adam clarifies that the scorched earth game theory stuff allowing removing recipients is kind of orthogonal to the discussion.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T21:20:09.342796+00:00