NTP + median peer time + system clock seems like the perfect solution to me. If two or more sources are in agreement within 40 minutes, use the average of those times. If all three disagree, ask the user to fix it.

Edit: instead of using the average, you could get a more accurate time by using NTP if it agrees, or the system time otherwise.

It's still centralized. Someone controls pool.ntp.org.

I found it on 4chan around February 2010. The post was someone complaining about how long it was taking to download blocks.

I've always been interested in decentralized systems such as BitTorrent, Tor, and Freenet, so I was immediately interested.

With NTP we'd really need to reduce the max adjustment time, or else whoever controls pool.ntp.org could easily attack people.

Originally NTP was supposed to be used along with peer time. Maybe that would be better than relying only on NTP.

BitDNS can't use Bitcoin's lightweight client mode, so in the future it will always be rare for people to run their own BitDNS resolvers. I don't know if Namecoin is set up to use client mode, either, though. BitDNS probably requires more resources, too, since servers need to scan all non-DNS transactions.

I think Namecoin is broken for other reasons, though:
https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7244.msg106438#msg106438

No: you also have to generate an ECDSA public key, or else the address is useless. Bitcoin also hashes the public key twice.

There are 2¹⁶⁰ possible addresses, which is a ridiculous number. If every person on Earth makes ten addresses per second for 20 years (2x10¹⁸ total addresses), then the probability that at least two of these addresses collide is about 1.57x10^-12.

Yes.


Some people think that a separate system is better. I think combining DNS into Bitcoin's block chain (not into the Bitcoin software) is better because the incentive problem is already solved, it's easier to do, and it would give some intrinsic value to bitcoins.

Unconfirmed transactions are only grey when you receive them. They don't count toward your balance, since they might never clear.

I think it is a legitimate attack, though it's difficult to perform. The max time the network is allowed to adjust your clock should be reduced to 40 minutes.

There's another duplicate in 91880.

Coins created through generation are not spendable until they have 100 confirmations. So once a split lasts longer than 100 blocks (from the perspective of the smaller side), lots of people are likely to lose transactions, as all transactions based on the now-invalid generated coins will also become invalid.


The OP specified that Mexico is the smaller side.

Yes.

Transactions will only become invalid if:
- The split lasts so long that Mexico generates 100 blocks and generations therefore mature; or,
- Someone who can communicate on both sides of the split double-spends his coins.

Yeah, someone's making huge forks of the testnet chain.

It only prints a message. It used to shut off RPC, but this was removed. (IMO, it should have been left in as an opt-in feature.)

The info on that image is terrible.

All of the miners in Mexico will put the transactions in their old chain back into the transaction queue once they switch chains.

Only Satoshi has an alert key.

Bitcoin Block Explorer is written in PHP.

No, it's from the karma mod. It was always listed on profiles.