Den 12 feb 2015 15:53 skrev "Mike Hearn" <m...@plan99.net>:
>>
>> > So you're just arguing that a notary is different to a miner, without
spelling out exactly why.
>
> I'm afraid I still don't understand why you think notaries would build
long term businesses but miners wouldn't, in this model.
>
> I think you are saying because notaries have identity, brand awareness
and because they have big up front bonds, that means they will be
trustworthy.
Miners aren't contractors, they don't have to care about repeat business.
Individual miners don't have enough impact to have a negative impact on
their own capital investment. Zero-conf transactions also aren't that tied
to the Bitcoin valuation.
Multisignature notaries need to convince people to select them. They want
to know that even with collateral, their funds won't be temporarily locked
up and unspendable for days at a time.
What services would miners provide here, do you think?
> Well, sure. It's the same model governments use and is why being a money
transmitter in the USA is so difficult: you need to put up large sums of
money as collateral and have your fingerprints taken 48 times. Then you can
start advertising to get customers!
Obviously you need to have collateral to provide collateral. Can't make
cryptographic verifiable guarantees if you don't have the resources to back
them.
> The reason mining is such a nice model is it doesn't have these sorts of
requirements.
And also can't make these assurances. Any minority miner can be overrun.
>> As notaries can be small operations ..... [snip] ...... (almost every
large organization in the world have some unallocated funds somewhere).
>
> Which is it? Are notaries small operations or large operations?
The operation itself is small. A few people maintaining a few servers.
The collateral needed depends on how many and how large simultaneous
transactions they want to provide assurances for, so they can chose to be a
small player for one niche market or large and global if they have the
funds for it.
> I think exploring new consensus models with semi-trusted notaries is
interesting, but it's not Bitcoin.
Methods for decentralized consensus that aren't PoW also aren't Bitcoin.
> Please don't try and apply this logic in the real world :( Rephrased:
>
> "That's a nice house. I noticed it's made of wood. I'm going to start
fires until it burns down, because there is no guarantee your house won't
burn down in future and it's important you understand that wooden houses
aren't safe. Really I'm just doing you a favour."
Actually that IS often a bad idea. But fortunately the risk and threat is
low, and mitigation is well understood.
> I'm really not a fan of Peter's approach, which is "hey let's try and
cause as many problems as possible to try and prove a point, without having
created any solutions". Replace-by-fee-scorched-earth doesn't work and
isn't a solution. Miners can easily cut payment fraudsters in on the stolen
money, and as they'd need to distribute custom double-spending wallets to
make the scheme work it'd be very easy to do.
Security analysis requires having the mindset of an attacker. Sometimes
that reveals suboptimal choices. Then you want them changed to more stable
choices such that once the incentives change, the risk already is gone.
Minimization of damage, simply put.
>> Your also ssume people will expect the Bitcoin network to keep zero-conf
safe forever and that Bitcoin valuation is tied to that. Given the options
available and current state of things, I'm assuming that's wrong.
>
> Why? You think ability to make payments in a few seconds is some
irrelevant curiousity?
No. But you can't be certain it is secure without having a solid reliable
mechanism to provide such a guarantee.
You want zero-conf to stay safe without involvement of servers? Then
please, try to find a way to secure it. Right now you're assuming it can
remain safe based on circumstances which can change and assumptions about
market participant's valuations that likely aren't true.
> Let's put it this way. If BitPay's business model evaporates tomorrow,
along with all the merchants they support, do you think that'd have any
effect on Bitcoin's value? If not, why not?
It would. They'd tank. But you're assuming too much about the basis for
valuation.
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