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Title: Separated transactions from mining Post by: kstepyra on November 08, 2013, 03:23:17 AM Hello,
I was thinking why bitcoin transactions are not separated from mining blocks? If it's only signature thing (public/private key to show you are owner of bitcoins) then why not put them outside blocks to make them "instant" for people and leave mining as it is now? Why "secure" transactions by mining if it is (it is?) only cryptography thing? Mining of course must be done as it is now due to "proof of work" stuff (finding proper hash), with a new "source" keypair generated for each block. It's just an idea. I am 99% sure i am wrong, but maybe? :) EDIT: posted in wrong place, please remove Title: Re: Separated transactions from mining Post by: DeathAndTaxes on November 08, 2013, 03:28:35 AM Decentralized money has two potential problems.
Tx signing solves the "authentic user" problem. Mining solves the "consensus" problem. There is no purpose to mining other than to secure the network. New coins are the incentive for mining but the purpose is to secure the network. If you can solve the consensus problem without mining then there is no reason to keep it. Mining is required as tx signing only solves half the problem. You can authenticate txs but you can't bring the network into consensus when their is a conflict (two valid but incompatible txs) with just tx signing. Miners force the network to accept a consensus. That really is all mining is doing. If the same "coin" (technically unspent output) is sent to two addresses (A & B) as seperate incompatible txs then the network will be in conflict. Some nodes believe A is valid, some believe B is valid. Technically from a tx signing standpoint they are BOTH valid but obviously the same "coin" can't be spent twice. Mining is Satoshi's way of forcing all nodes to accept one tx as valid. b]Without mining how would you achieve consensus when part of the network thinks one thing (like tx A is valid) and part of the network believes a different incompatible thing (like tx B is valid)?[/b] Title: Re: Separated transactions from mining Post by: DeathAndTaxes on November 08, 2013, 03:29:17 AM EDIT: posted in wrong place, please remove You can move it yourself. Look in the lower left there is an option "Move Topic". Title: Re: Separated transactions from mining Post by: kstepyra on November 08, 2013, 03:39:47 AM I forgot about double spending:) thanks for reminding. Had hope for it to work but yeah, it would be split and noone will know which one is good.
EDIT: not even double spending, just splitting transaction in 2 parts of network. 4:40 am, time to sleep ;) |