There are a number of ways to deal with some of the objections that have come up in this thread; e.g. the unlucky user scenario.
Refer to the paper "Micropayments Revisited" written by Silvio Micali and Ron Rivest: http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/publications.html [The powerpoint slides are also quite useful.] The schemes in this paper combine Payword (Rivest and Shamir) with the Lottery Ticket proposal (Rivest). They also introduce a number of other neat ideas. As of the last time I talked to Ron and Silvio about it, the Peppercoin scheme is based on these techniques. Regards, Zully ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Zulfikar Ramzan IP Dynamics, Inc. http://www.ipdynamics.com Secure, Scalable Virtual Community Networks > -----Original Message----- > From: David Wagner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 4:47 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Micropayments, redux > > Matt Crawford wrote: > >> No, it doesn't. It doesn't take unlimited time for lottery-based > >> payment schemes to average out; finite time suffices to get the > >> schemes to average out to within any desired error ratio. > > > >Strictly speaking, the average will come within your error tolerance > >of the expected value *with probability near 1*. > > Yes, but the probability of it being significantly worse than I claimed > (i.e., by more than a factor t) is exponentially small (in t). One can > easily calculate concretely exactly what the risk curve looks like. > I'll spare everyone the details and just say that I see no reason why > this should be a showstopper in practice. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > The Cryptography Mailing List > Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
