Bitcoin Forum

How would bitcoin work on a delay-tolerant network like Probabilistic Routing Protocol using History of Encounters and Transitivity (PRoPHET) [1] ?

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-dtnrg-prophet

Interesting :-)
Will look into it, but so far I'd say that it depends on what part of the network you want to put on top of the delay-tolerant network. The mining part wont work at all since we try to establish a proof-of-work backed quorum on the network state. Similar to the Marscoin discussion a few weeks back it simply does not work if communication delays are high. On the other hand payment processing might work, as long as transactions are propagated to the mining network eventually and back to the originating client for local book keeping.

As far as I can tell, the bitcoin protocol does not work if the round trip time is longer than the TCP time-out (2 minutes).

In any case, you can't expected to generate (many) new blocks if your round trip time is longer than the block chain interval of about 10 minutes.

I think this limitation may be serious enough to undermine Bitcoin in the long-term. Somebody on these forums has suggested that isolated groups (like a Mars colony) may simply start their own block-chain for local use. Not sure how exchanges between networks would work. You would probably need to use a trusted courier to move a wallet.dat (for each network) within "range" of the main network periodically.

The TCP delay is not a limit, even if the RTT is huge the transactions might eventually reach the bitcoin network and be accepted there. Mining is a problem, but simply because due to the delay a block from the lower delay network might have superseeded your block. The longer it takes for your block to propagate the lower the chances of it becoming the next effective block.

As for the Mars/Moon/Earth exchanges: they do work. Take MtGox for example, there is no longer delay network than sending money via wire transfer xD

depends on how exactly the new block chain formed.  i.e. forked from the existing chain via a rule change or started completely on its own.

if the former, it could get messy.

with the latter, they would function as two independent currencies and exchanges would work the same as currency exchanges do now, bitcoin or other, though pegging the currencies to each other would likely be desirable.

ok, so the colonies have their own block chains, so how are the transaction made between the colonies?
what about people who travel between the colonies?

Here are two related threads:
 - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=1838.0 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=1838.0)
 - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3714.0 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3714.0)

interesting read, saved to my projects folder

I though of using a freenet-like network with proxy servers for the Internet access

You wouldn't be able to mine the Earth chain from Mars, but transactions would still work... slowly. VERY slowly. Hence the need for MarsCoin.

You might want to see these also then:
 - http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=8379.0
 - http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=7181.0
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