Author: Terry McLaughlin 2018-09-07 05:02:29
Published on: 2018-09-07T05:02:29+00:00
On the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Gregory Maxwell responded to a proposal by Brandon Smith for a non-monotone validity event in Bitcoin transactions. Maxwell explained that this functionality does not currently exist because it has been proposed and determined to be harmful in the past. The design of CLTV/CSV was carefully constructed to prevent transactions from becoming invalid based on time. A naive construction where the current time/height is pushed onto the stack would allow transactions to become invalid, which is why this approach was avoided. When a spend goes from valid to invalid, a reorganization can destroy coins without any dishonest actions from the coin's prior owner. This effectively makes the coin function like a recently generated coin that can be destroyed through reorgs. Maxwell argues that there is no use case for non-monotone validity events that still sounds useful once the negative effects are addressed.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T14:48:52.634615+00:00