On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 10:41:30 PM Troy Benjegerdes wrote: > I want to get some feedback.. I've used distributed version control > systems for a long time, and the most useful feature is to be able > to merge two different forks. > > So what's the equivalent of this for Bitcoin or other crypto-currencies? > > Let's suppose that me and my friends get 'islanded' from the rest of > the internet for a week, but we still want to trade bitcoin. It would > work if there are local miners, until we reconnect. > > Suppose we have the main chain (Alice), while bob is on a boat, trading > with some friends, but has no network connectivity. > > When bob reconnects with Alice, a 'Merge' transaction happens where a > miner looks at bob's forked blockchain, sees no double-spends, and > includes BOTH chains. > > Now suppose someone on bob's boat has a buggy client, or sent a > transaction before disconnect that results in a double-spend on the > merge. > > So we have a merge conflict, which generally requires human interaction, > so bob and his friends broadcast a MERGE request with a transaction fee > sufficient to cover reconciling the double-spends, AND incentivize a > miner to do some extra work to merge. > > Thoughts everyone?
This is interesting, but I'm not sure it has the right incentives. First, it adds more reason for miners to *avoid* including transactions (they might turn out to be double-spends and make merging costly). Second, it gives people reason to double-spend (the miner might cover the cost of it). Finally, you don't appear to address how to deal with the subsidy - do both miners get it? Luke ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, & PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
