Bitcoin Forum

After reading through the Master-P thread i was sitting here thinking about why something like this doesnt exist?

For example generate a wallet that requires 5 of 8 signatures or something around that mark to release the funds. (Set up by generating a multi sig wallet and using the public signatures of all 8 people as part of the seed)

Set up in such a way that the council has 1 signature each. This would prevent a single person running off with the funds. Atleast 5 of the members would have to agree to such a thing?

Yes the fee would be higher for the service however the trade off for that is the security knowing that if one of the members died become unavailable as long as the others sign off the transaction would go through. One member also could not simply dissapear with all the btc.

Why do you think master-p became a popular escrow in the first place? Low fees, high fees are not attractive when lower fee alternatives are present even though they might be more risky

Power corrupts.

It's not bad idea but fees will be too high paying for the time of 8+ people. Power abusing is always on line, and with 1 and with 101 people.

and even then, you can never be sure that those 8 people aren't just one guy with 8 alts ;)

Well you could ask for ID proofs if the council is stable. But then how do you select the 8 members? What happens if they leave? Don't they have a lot of power? What if they refuse to escrow some transactions/people?

I don't like the idea of the council of the wises :p

Hi, 8 Was an arbitrary number it could be anything really.

I wasn't saying have this "official" that everything had to go through them. More that some of the well known respected members could offer the service if they did it together and people would then have the option of using them or just a single person.

I just tried this out in electrum making a 3 person address.

It generates 1 address doing this and requires 2 public keys.

The other 2 people can also load the same wallet by substituting the private key that was generated with their own and supplying the other 2 public keys.

As for someone leaving it could just be moved to another wallet with the 5/8 signing off on it and adding a new member with the new generation.

Of course 5 of them could run out with the money but its much harder to be done than a single person like master-o for example.

I like the idea and if it get released, I will you it for sure for my transactions.

Can you make a 3 person address with electrum? Can't seem to find this option...

Well I don't think so, just because they'll probably mange 8 times more money so it'll be 8 times more tempting to run!

When you go to new change wallet type from standard to multi and then you can select how many of how many are required

It will definitely be a good idea for the larger trades. Costly? sure but better to pay a little more fee than risk losing it all.

cool!
Thanks for the tip, i've actually learned something new today...

Will be time consuming. I can assume the 5 of 8 members are located in different area or time zone. They are not full time at Bitcointalk.org, need to work or go to holidays. They are sparing free time to review this forum. By the time of geting 5 confirmation, it may take a few days. In 5 days, many changes are occurring, like the exchange rate, willing to trade etc

what you are suggesting is good for big trades but for normal trades this will be too costly and even this is also not 100% positive , in this way also their are so many loopholes , taking only one person in mind and considering ESCROW service wrong is not proper, their are lot of more escrow providers that are so genuine. its upto you how to find them,

A cool idea in principle but that would require a lot of coordination and I can imagine it would become unwieldy rapidly. People go off abroad, lose internet access for a while. They might fall out with each other and factions might arise. I'll keep an eye out for such an implementation anyway.

I remember watch a movie which I dont remember the title. About a team of safeguard money run with the money given to them from bank and make a story that they got robbed. Even in real live there also still can happen like your post. Escrow council make a story they got hack, so not 100% safe and even if safe I don't think the fee will be less than 1%

Why pay more for 5 ppl to be your escrow when you can pay less for just 1 person?

When the stakes are high enough it would make sense to have a "council" as you call it, but for most uses it would just be overkill.

This made me chuckle, but it's true.  ;)

Its pretty hard to setup a fast escrow when you need eight guys to release it.
Imagine if you want to buy a hardware fast, so the seller won't give it to other buyer, but you need to wait for 8 guys ...