Author: Pieter Wuille 2012-11-27 11:36:13
Published on: 2012-11-27T11:36:13+00:00
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012, Pieter proposed a change in the name of SignedReceipt to Acceptance. The aim was to provide confirmation by the merchant that a payment had been made. If a customer does not receive a SignedReceipt, they can still prove payment via a signed invoice plus accepted Bitcoin transactions, which is mathematically a proof of purchase. However, Michael Gronager found SignedReceipt superfluous since most payment systems like Bitpay/Wallet already send an email receipt.Pieter's proposal differs from Gavin's original proposal, where he did not want to couple the receipt with the acceptance of the Bitcoin transaction. Pieter suggested allowing merchants/payment processors to take the risk of zero or low confirmation transactions provided they were insured against it and allowed to reply "accepted" immediately. This would be a permanent proof of payment, even if the actual Bitcoin transaction that backs it gets reverted.Pieter also had a separate "pending" state, which means the receiver isn't willing to just accept the current state as irrevocably paid. In this case, the sender was allowed to retry until the receipt said "accepted" or "rejected." The point was to avoid customers/merchants dealing with the uncertainty involved in Bitcoin transactions. At some point, someone is going to accept the transaction (whether that is at 0 or at 120 confirmations), and acceptance will at the higher level be considered a boolean anyway - not some "probably, unless reorg".
Updated on: 2023-05-19T16:11:55.289319+00:00