Double-spend is a misnomer when applied to a blockchain

CIYAM

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Ian Knowles - CIYAM Lead Developer

Quote from: ?? on ??

Maybe we use terminology they are used to with legacy banking, Transaction hold, or transaction pending when we describe 0 confirmation transactions (so merchants will finally understand) and instead of double spend I like conflicting transaction, it gives more peace at mind for sure.

Transaction pending makes a lot of sense (and nice to see a constructive post from an ad-sigger).

CIYAM

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Ian Knowles - CIYAM Lead Developer

You make good points in terms of terminology @shorena but I guess my beef with the "double-spend" term is that is actually the "very crux" of what Bitcoin actually does (i.e. it solves that problem).

So if the public perception is that Bitcoin can be "double-spent" then in the public's mind Bitcoin hasn't actually achieved anything at all!

shorena

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No I dont escrow anymore.

"Double spend" in a true sense is indeed not happening, but its difficult to explain without first explaning how transactions actually work. The concept of inputs and outputs is not commonly known which is IMHO needed to understand how a transaction can be conflicted.

Besides these complications the word is not wrong as the same input is used twice. In the perception of some an unconfirmed transaction is already spend. You can hardly blame them either as this is how bitcoin works in the majority of cases. Many services accept unconfirmed transactions and offer a service in return. Under this premise issuing a competing transaction can be called a double spend. Precision is important when explaining complex issues, but it is also important to speak a language that is well received and understood on the other hand. You cant force a term to get accepted just because its correct. Hoover is not a vacuum cleaner; Blockchain is not the wallet offered by blockchain.info; pampers is not a diaper; a bit is not 0.000 001 BTC; yet given the right context we know what people talk about.

Aswan

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Quote from: CIYAM on October 05, 2015, 11:14:38 AM

Quote from: Aswan on October 05, 2015, 11:04:29 AM

How about calling it a "conflicting transaction" and "to conflict-spend"?

I like "conflicting transaction" but not "to conflict-spend" (the latter just seems rather hard to understand).

Yeah well, I though about it for a while and it seems hard to come up with a good verb =/
Maybe someone else got an idea.

CIYAM

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Ian Knowles - CIYAM Lead Developer

Quote from: Aswan on October 05, 2015, 11:04:29 AM

How about calling it a "conflicting transaction" and "to conflict-spend"?

I like "conflicting transaction" but not "to conflict-spend" (the latter just seems rather hard to understand).

Aswan

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Quote from: CIYAM on October 05, 2015, 10:41:32 AM

Perhaps someone could come up with a better term other than "double-spend" to describe what amounts to a "race to be first confirmed" to avoid the misunderstanding that is occurring.

How about calling it a "conflicting transaction" and "to conflict-spend"?

CIYAM

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Ian Knowles - CIYAM Lead Developer

Currently I see a lot of topics talking about people "successfully double spending" but if you understand Bitcoin you should know that there is not one single case of double spending in the entire blockchain (there cannot be as that is the very problem that the Nakamoto consensus was created to solve and if it didn't solve that problem then bitcoins would be worthless and we'd have never had heard of Satoshi at all).

It is entirely possible for an unconfirmed tx to end up never confirmed and the same UTXOs to be used in a new tx that does get confirmed but that is not technically "double spending" except outside of the blockchain if a merchant accepted the unconfirmed tx (which they have been told again and again is not safe to do).

So any "double spending" is not actually happening within the blockchain itself but from outside users that are not correctly using it.

Even one confirmation isn't necessarily sufficient as one or two block re-orgs do happen fairly regularly (although most of those don't end up involving the same UTXOs involved in different txs).

Perhaps someone could come up with a better term other than "double-spend" to describe what amounts to a "race to be first confirmed" to avoid the misunderstanding that is occurring.

Topic: Double-spend is a misnomer when applied to a blockchain (Read 524 times)