"Dirty Deals in Smoke-Filled Rooms" J. Ranvier discusses a Mike Hearn proposal

[Peter R]

There is no guarantee that a transaction will be included in the next block.

There cannot be a guarantee that a transaction will be included in the next block unless you control 100% of the hash power.  

There is no guarantee that [once] a transaction [has been received by a pool it] will be included in the next block [mined by the pool].

A sufficiently high fee should (nearly) guarantee inclusion in the next block found by honest miners.  Market-driven floating fees and child-pays-parent prioritizing should also make the TX priority criteria more transparent and flexible in the future.  Your idea would actually give less predictable results while paying the miners twice (the standard fee and some "monthly service fee" you seem to be proposing).    

And 3-4 are assumed to be default behaviour, but not required?

I don't follow.  

There is nothing stopping a node deciding to drop a transaction from its mempool and prefer a different one, or deciding not to relay it.

Nothing besides the source code.  Compliant nodes neither accept double-spent TX variants into mempool nor relay them to their peers.  If a non-compliant peer floods the network with numerous TX variants spending the same outputs, they will be dropped as part of DoS mitigation.  

If you imagine a network where the majority of nodes and miners just start doing "whatever" then we have bigger problems lol.  

Plus, the merchant currently only receives the 'service' from the node they submit to. Receiving it simultaneously from pools covering say 60% of hashing power is a much more powerful guarantee.

Merchants can already estimate the % of the network that has accepted a transaction into mempool by employing a well-connected listening node.  The "service" of finding out if a peer has TX1 (or a conflicting variant TX2) in mempool is just one of the perks of being a node lol.

If most of the network has accepted TX1 into mempool, then most likely it will be TX1 that gets mined.  If 10% of the hashpower has TX2 in mempool then the probability that TX2 gets confirmed (instead of TX1) is approximately 10%.  

How many merchants are going to be interested in running a full bitcoin node, just to be able to safely process transactions?
I'm sure most would rather pay a small fee to someone else to provide that guarantee for them.
The way to gain mainstream acceptance is to hide the technical details, and provide simple services, not to require everyone else to learn all about it.

Merchants can employ a listening node by using a third-party payment processor such as BitPay.  Your idea would actually give less predictable results.  

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[1714952402]

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[EFFV]

It's the confidence that bitcoin users have in the perception of the bitcoin protocol as it currently exists which gives bitcoin its value.

It's the confidence that bitcoin users have in the perception of the bitcoin protocol as a trustless system which gives bitcoin its value.

It's the confidence that bitcoin users have in the perception of the bitcoin protocol as a decentralized system which gives bitcoin its value.


No doubt Mike Hearn is a smart guy, but his technological arrogance is such that he's playing with fire by desiring to change the core principles as established by Satoshi, the very principles that have caused bitcoin to be the success it is today.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you, Mike. Bitcoin has value precisely because it is not what you want it to be.



Overall, if Mike Hearn feels so strongly about his ideas, then he should create his own altcoin/payment system distinct from bitcoin.

But that's unlikely, for I assume Mike Hearn et al are pursuing such dangerous ideas based upon potential personal profit.

+1

[dwma]

The article led me to research Peter Todd and Mike Hearn.  I came away a new fan of Peter Todd. 

LOL @ developers scared to post on the dev list because of him.

I wonder what the nature of the smoke in the backroom was ?

Dan Larimer and Peter Todd FTW.

[tvbcof]

The article led me to research Peter Todd and Mike Hearn.  I came away a new fan of Peter Todd. 

LOL @ developers scared to post on the dev list because of him.

My reaction as well.  I thought it sounded like something from The Onion.

Seriously, anyone who is hiring developers who are to timid to defend their work or put up with some occasionally harsh criticism might want to keep their HR dept active.  Nothing is more valuable than having a bright and sometimes antagonistic set of eyes making observations in my experience.

And for several years I seem to notice a pattern of Gavin saying some pretty offensive things in a passive/aggressive manner then acting all butt-hurt when others escalate things.

I wonder what the nature of the smoke in the backroom was ?

Dan Larimer and Peter Todd FTW.

I've been a fan-boi of Todd's and Maxwell's for a while now.  Garzik used to be up there but has fallen off.  I don't follow things closely enough to know much about Larimer.

I'm really heartened to see the grey-beards working on sidechains.  I like the treechains idea even better in principle but I'd take either.  And maybe even both.  I'll bet that those who are involved with both efforts have the native ability to recognize the strengths, weaknesses, and overlaps of the respective works, and I hope they choose to cooperate be it in Bitcoin or on a more general-use publishing system.

[HeliKopterBen]

If we assume that F = 5% of the population attempts to double-spend at every opportunity and has the capacity to game the mempool heterogeneity, then the total losses due to zero-confim fraud are:

   losses = F x P = 0.1 x 0.05 = 0.5%

I couldn't imagine F being that high anyway. 

This problem would mainly apply to face-to-face transactions of little value and merchants could be alerted as soon as a double spend is detected.  The thief would hardly have left the building by that time and could be arrested in many cases.  Let the justice system handle it for now and if it becomes a chronic problem then revisit the issue.

As we have seen with the March 2013 fork, protocol changes can have unintended consequences.  I vote to tread as lightly as possible in that respect.

[froggyfeels]

1. Is there any reason to worry that the current mode of bitcoin development is starting to deviate from the original intentions of Satoshi?
2. Who are the people pushing for such a bad change, and what associations do these people have?
3. What can normal people do about it, normal people who have their plate mostly full with real life issues already?
4. Should there be a new foundation, replacing or in addition to the existing bitcoin foundation, and if so, how would we assure that this foundation also did not become corrupt?
5. Would perhaps the best idea be to monitor the source code and make efforts to alert the community if certain changes were implemented?
6. Is power of various resources in the bitcoin community to centralized? I noticed there's an overlap of mods of bitcointalk and r/bitcoin for instance. Who controls the wiki and so on. I think it's important that there's not a single person or group of persons having too much power. Even if they do not intend to misuse their power, they might if a gun is put to their head, or to the head of their families.
7. The cryptocurrency world is fast paced, and it is hard to pay attention to everything that happens, is there a central repository where the most important issues are handpicked and highlighted? I noticed your blog seems to be a good source.

I don't have specific answers to these questions.

In general, it's not a good idea to rely on single individuals or organizations to protect your interests. The interests which are threatened by Bitcoin are very good at subverting that kind of organization.

The most important thing you can do as a Bitcoin user is realize that you've got options. Satoshi's client is no longer the only game in town, with libbitcoin and btcd maturing as viable alternatives.

If it were up to me the community's focus would be on making the Bitcoin network heterogenous, with no single implementation running a majority of the network. The fact that all miners run on the same reference implementation is only slightly less of a problem than the 51% attack everybody is so worried about.

The international Bitcoin community should be hard at work building independent alternatives to US-centric services and software if they want their own interests to be protected.

Very well put my man.