> On Jul 5, 2019, at 12:27, Eric Voskuil <e...@voskuil.org> wrote: > > >> On Jul 4, 2019, at 21:05, ZmnSCPxj <zmnsc...@protonmail.com> wrote: >> >> Good morning Eric, >> >>> As with Bitcoin mining, it is the consumed cost that matters in this >>> scenario, (i.e., not the hash rate, or in this case the encumbered coin >>> face value). Why would the advertiser not simply be required to burn .1 >>> coin for the same privilege, just as miners burn energy? Why would it not >>> make more sense to spend that coin in support of the secondary network >>> (e.g. paying for confirmation security), just as with the burning of energy >>> in Bitcoin mining? > > Good morning ZmnSCPxj, > >> Using the unspentness-time of a UTXO allows for someone advertising a >> service or producer to "close up shop" by simply spending the advertising >> UTXO. >> For instance, if the advertisement is for sale of a limited stock of goods, >> once the stock has been sold, the merchant (assuming the merchant used own >> funds) can simply recover the locked funds, with the potential to reinvest >> them elsewhere. >> This allows some time-based hedging for the merchant (they may be willing to >> wait indefinitely for the stock to be sold, but once the stock is sold, they >> can immediately reap the rewards of not having their funds locked anymore). > > This is a materially different concept than proposed by Tamas. > > “...he gives up his control of the coins until maturity, he can not use them > elsewhere until then.” > >> Similarly, an entity renting out a UTXO for an advertisement might allow for >> early reclamation of the UTXO in exchange for partial refund of fee; as the >> value in the UTXO is now freed to be spent elsewhere, the lessor can lease >> it to another advertiser. > > You appear to be proposing a design whereby either the owner or the renter > (not entirely clear to me which) can spend the “locked up” coin at any time > (no maturity constraint), by dropping the covenant. > > If the renter can do this he can simply steal the coin from the owner. > > If the owner can do this there is no value to the renter (or as a proof of > cost), as the owner retains full control of the coin. > > If you mean that the age of the encumbrance is the proof of cost, this > requires no covenant. I don’t believe this is what you intended, just > covering all bases. > >> Burnt funds cannot be "un-burnt" to easily signal the end of a term for an >> advertisement. > > And as I have shown above, nor can a “locked-up” coin be unlocked to do the > same. > >> Similarly for miner fees. > > Well that’s the point, money spent is no longer under one’s control. The > provable cost of this surrender was your stated objective. Renting at a > fractional cost of coin face value is a non-recoverable spend by the renter > to the owner. Burning or spending the same amount in a way that is provably > not to one’s self achieves the exact same result. > >> The best that can be done would be to have the nodes of the classified ads >> network automatically decay the spent value of older advertisements to let >> them be dropped from their advertisements pool. > > The advertiser can presumably trade control of as space on the ad network. > It’s not clear to me why this is not simply an independent chain of limited > ad space ownership. It might as well be namecoin. > >> Less importantly, burning currently has bad resource usage for practical >> applications. >> Practical burning requires spending to a provably-unspendable P2PKH or P2SH >> or similar output. >> This adds UTXO entries to the UTXO database that will never be removed.
I forgot to add that it is certainly possible to burn using a nonstandard script, such as the non-zero OP_RETURN you suggested, without a consensus change. This can be, as you say, made more practical with a policy change. But such changes are up to individual node operators as they require no deviation from consensus. Yet ultimately this is a miner preference, and anyone can mine. Finally, as I pointed out, burning is not necessary. Simply spending the coin as a fee is sufficient. > If an output is provably unspendable (burned) it is not a UTXO. > > It is worth noting that not all full node implementations require a store of > UTXOs, this is an implementation detail. For example, libbitcoin uses a flag > on each output to indicate its spentness on the strong branch. As such the > store size is linear by height. > >> This will of course be remedied by compact UTXO representations later, but >> not today. >> Similarly, it would be very nice to have non-0-amount `OP_RETURN` outputs, >> as `OP_RETURN` outputs are never stored in the UTXO database. >> However, this will require a change in node relay policy, which again will >> take time to make possible, and would not be practical today. >> >> Thus I think use of UTXO is better than burning or mining-fee-spending. > > I don’t believe you have shown this. > > Best, > Eric > >> Also, mostly trivia: >> The use of UTXOs to advertise services is not original to me --- I found the >> LN channel gossip to be the inspiration for this. >> Publicly-announced channels indicate the backing UTXO that funds the channel. >> The purpose of publicly announcing the channels is to be able to provide the >> service, of forwarding across the Lightning Network; thus the public >> announcement serves as an advertisement for the service. >> Channel closure immediately spends the UTXO, and also doubles to "revoke" >> the existing "advertisement". >> I found this ability to "revoke" the advertisement appealing, and thereby >> designed the Bitcoin Classified Ads Network around the UTXO spentness >> mechanism. >> >> Regards, >> ZmnSCPxj _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
