|
Title: Namecheap now accepting Zero-Confirmation Bitcoin Transactions Post by: forbun on August 14, 2013, 03:12:50 AM How is it safe for them to do this?
Quote Zero-Confirmation Bitcoin Transactions Great news for our customers who use Bitcoins to deposit: we've reduced the time it will take for those Bitcoins to be deposited! Now, Bitcoin deposits should hit your Namecheap account almost instantly. We appreciate everyone's feedback about our service offerings--this small change is only one way we're trying every day to implement your feedback on the site. Please keep the feedback coming! Title: Re: Namecheap now accepting Zero-Confirmation Bitcoin Transactions Post by: Kluge on August 14, 2013, 03:24:37 AM It's not safe (I'd guess they just check against blockchain and queue to verify it is probably not a double-spend). It's convenient. Sometimes, it's better to provide a convenient service with low rates of fraud than a relatively inconvenient service where fraud is nonexistent.
Title: Re: Namecheap now accepting Zero-Confirmation Bitcoin Transactions Post by: Astrohacker on August 14, 2013, 03:29:24 AM It's perfectly safe because they can always revoke the domain name if you manage a double spend. Same thing if you did a credit card charge back.
Title: Re: Namecheap now accepting Zero-Confirmation Bitcoin Transactions Post by: Plazmotech on August 14, 2013, 07:48:19 AM What people truly don't understand about confirmations is this:
Double-Spend is hard It is truly an extremely difficult thing to accomplish – Nobody would ever attempt a double spend on something as inexpensive as a domain name. Not only that, but Namecheap could easily revoke the domain as a result of an attempted double-spend. Title: Re: Namecheap now accepting Zero-Confirmation Bitcoin Transactions Post by: virtualmaster on August 14, 2013, 08:20:42 AM How is it safe for them to do this? In this case is 100% safe because it takes more than 1 hour until you can use your domain for anything and in that time they have 6 confirmations.Title: Re: Namecheap now accepting Zero-Confirmation Bitcoin Transactions Post by: Peter Todd on August 14, 2013, 02:27:15 PM What people truly don't understand about confirmations is this: Double-Spend is hard It is truly an extremely difficult thing to accomplish – Nobody would ever attempt a double spend on something as inexpensive as a domain name. Not only that, but Namecheap could easily revoke the domain as a result of an attempted double-spend. Double-spending is actually really easy - here's a nice tool to do it: https://blockchain.info/create-double-spend For instance with that tool I get a roughly 50:50 chance of ripping off Namecheap by sending simultaneous transactions. Similarly I could just send a transaction that some % of mining power ignores, and then double-spend the first transaction with one that the hashing power does accept. There's lots of ways of pulling off that trick, because what transactions what miners accept varies greatly. But it doesn't matter, because as others have noted canceling the domain registration after the fact if the payment doesn't go through in the end is perfectly reasonable. Having said that, we can make zero-conf transactions significantly more secure, ironically by making double-spending easier: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251233.msg2669189#msg2669189 It's still not as secure as an actual confirmation, but it's pretty good and relies on economic incentives rather than people being "honest". This also will let you get stuck transactions unstuck by increasing the fee after they have been broadcast; currently if your initial guess for the fee is wrong a transaction can easily become stuck for hours with not much you can do about it. |