[Theory] The optimal confirmation time

[person]

The point I was making is that it is an estimate of the lower bound on security.  You shouldn't assume that a transaction worth $50 million is safe after 6 confirms. 

Probabilistic speaking then, having the $50million split in multiples transactions sent out at different block levels would considerably lower the risk of a full transaction loss.

This entire rented hash rate would also need to be in place before that transaction is broadcasted.
Trying to re-mine, 'alone', at least 6 new blocks to build a chain long enough to take over the consensus, would bring the entire network to a long wait as new blocks are not broadcasted. This raises suspicion, and at the first complaint of a successful attack the price drops to near-zero, making the attack unprofitable in the end.

It's interesting to think that the economics required to attack the network successfully are made even worse if the attack succeeds.

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[cheako]

...and at the first complaint of a successful attack the price drops to near-zero, making the attack unprofitable in the end.

It's interesting to think that the economics required to attack the network successfully are made even worse if the attack succeeds.

I wouldn't be so sure, it depends on how far the knowledge of a successful attack travels.  If the word drops like a stone hidden on page 15 of this mornings paper, then you'll likely not see a whole lot of movement of the market.

Conversely if it's front page news then a hard fork, miners recompile or change options to mine the correct chain in an attempt to orphan the attack.  Also note that the seller would offer incentives to the operators of the biggest pools, who should already be honor bound to ensuring that such an attack does not succeed.  After all that's why we've been paying them the big bucks.

I wouldn't count a price drop as something the miners would just ignore and a near-zero one at that is laughable.  It would effectively end their business and if it means mining one chain where the future worth of 25BTC is 0USD and mining another, the choice is clear.

[YarkoL]

The confirmation time is fine. There are alts with shorter confirmation time but at the cost of security.

The developer of Vanillacoin claims that he has improved the
network communications to a degree that a single confirmation is sufficient, with
variable block interval of 80-200 seconds. I haven't looked at the source very
closely, but I think he has optimized the transaction message format somehow.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=977245.msg11370378#msg11370378

I'm a little skeptical about this, as even with fast transfer of messages,
any lags and connectivity problem on the user's end could lead to forking AFAICS.

But I'd be really interested in knowing whether the number of confirmations in Bitcoin is
merely a function of network propagation rate, or are there any deeper reasons
why the current implementation matters.

[DumbFruit]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=977245.msg11370378#msg11370378

I'm a little skeptical about this, as even with fast transfer of messages,
any lags and connectivity problem on the user's end could lead to forking AFAICS.

But I'd be really interested in knowing whether the number of confirmations in Bitcoin is
merely a function of network propagation rate, or are there any deeper reasons
why the current implementation matters.

Network latency, bandwidth, block size, processor/memory/hard drive speed, geopolitical concerns, code efficiency, and fork convergence speed. Is there anything else?

Neither Bitcoin or any other clones I have inspected have replaced the original mempool technology or surrounding communications sub-system.

If you can improve the factors above then you can avoid the forks and therefore avoid the loss of work incurred when reducing confirmation rate. My understanding is that the mempool has been highly optimized with a bloom filter, so I'm not sure what gains can be made there, but I'm also not a Bitcoin developer. I'm also skeptical.

The Bitcoin mempool is inconsistent in that very few peers have the same transactions. The Vanillacoin "transaction pool" is consistent in that all clients and peers know all transactions.

Huh?

https://talk.vanillacoin.net/topic/142/version-0-2-8-beta-release/5