Topic: No matter how much we love BTC, confirmations take way too long! - page 6. (Read 8490 times)

Roughly spoken, yes they do this already. They scan for any incoming payments, and when they see one, they try to detect any conflicting payments (double spend attempts). If that doesn't occur for a few seconds, they assume it's safe to accept the transaction.

There's a lot of theoretical debate around this (especially involving mining pools running customized software, such as Eligius and BitUndo) but in every day practice this turns out to work extremely well and very secure.
 

No, no, NO! A common misconception.
 
1. Other coins do NOT have faster transaction times. Bitcoin's P2P network is by far the biggest, and (unlike centralized models and networks) the more nodes and connections, the faster it distributes data. Bitcoin transactions are faster than any other coin.
 
2. Other coins also do NOT have faster confirmation times when measuring certainty against waiting time (i.e. the only thing that really matters). People confuse certainty (probability that a transactions remains final) with the number of blocks that include the transaction, without taking into account how much processing is actually required to find such one block. Yes, the more blocks a transaction, the higher its certainty, but Bitcoin provides MUCH more certainty per block than other coins.

For example, Litecoin has 4x faster blocks (every 2.5 minutes instead of 10). This means the average calculation time to find a block is 4x less. This also means it's 4x easier to 'undo' a block (mine an alternative block to fork the blockchain). This means 1 Bitcoin block would offer the same amount of certainty as 4 Litecoins blocks! And that still only holds when Bitcoin and Litecoin networks would have equal hashing power. But that's not the case: Bitcoin's total hashing power is MUCH more than Litecoin's or even all other coins combined. So in fact, one Bitcoin block provides even MUCH more security than 4 Litecoin blocks!
 
 
TL;DR = Bitcoin wins.
 
 

So what happened to Satoshis theory As this person stated?



Satoshi's comment PASTED IN HERE  VV  
*********************
I believe it'll be possible for a payment processing company to provide as a service the rapid distribution of transactions with good-enough checking in something like 10 seconds or less.

The network nodes only accept the first version of a transaction they receive to incorporate into the block they're trying to generate.  When you broadcast a transaction, if someone else broadcasts a double-spend at the same time, it's a race to propagate to the most nodes first.  If one has a slight head start, it'll geometrically spread through the network faster and get most of the nodes.

A rough back-of-the-envelope example:
1         0
4         1
16        4
64        16
80%      20%

So if a double-spend has to wait even a second, it has a huge disadvantage.

The payment processor has connections with many nodes.  When it gets a transaction, it blasts it out, and at the same time monitors the network for double-spends.  If it receives a double-spend on any of its many listening nodes, then it alerts that the transaction is bad.  A double-spent transaction wouldn't get very far without one of the listeners hearing it.  The double-spender would have to wait until the listening phase is over, but by then, the payment processor's broadcast has reached most nodes, or is so far ahead in propagating that the double-spender has no hope of grabbing a significant percentage of the remaining nodes.
 **********************************


Or is this what payment processors do already and we are talking about something quicker here?

Just curious has anyone looked at the other coins, and why are some stating HIGH security even more than BTC or same + MUCH faster transaction times... I just don't get it, cant we just implement the same thing? Many test coins around.

The problem isn't websites, bitcoin is fine for *almost* every type of web purchase.

Merchants just have to learn use Bitcoin, most purchases can be accepted with 0 confirmations and simply the order automatically cancelled if not getting confirmation later or doublespend.

It will take some time and competetion before 0 confirmations will be widely accepted, and for rare situations with instant services with a lot of money in risk if doublespend like dice sites, 1 confirmation is more than enought for such secured Bitcoin by insane hashpower

really, really true.
If you receive the transaction on the device, it's done ... because transaction is transmit from "at most" 4 nodes.

Is gold a deflationary resource, and has that been a problem during the past few thousand years? (that is, until central banks decided it would be more fun for them if they had the ability to create virtual money out of thin air)

Sorry sir, that's complete and utter bullcrap. Over the past two years I have done many, many bitcoin payments in point of sale situations (shops, restaurants, pubs, markets, street vendors, you name it) and never, EVER did anyone request that I await even a single confirmation.

I reckon you just totally made up the the "sometimes make you wait almost an hour", right? Did you even ONCE, ever see anyone having to wait for 6 confirmations when paying with bitcoins?

Oh, and as for 'reality check', I run an online business. I'll tell you what reality is: paypal disputes, and chargebacks and credit card fraud. Having to wait for weeks or even months for your money, and still pay ridiculous fees. Getting all sorts of problems where customer from country X cannot pay on a website in country Y, because random bank restriction Z.

It's only a scarce resource if adoption grows faster than coins supplied.

Adoption may not be what you expect if altcoins that fix some of the issues with bitcoin survive and supply the demand.

And without some of them surviving I don't think bitcoin will either.

It's a scarce resource, deflationary in nature. Of course it's an intrinsic property. One could've predicted that before Bitcoin was even launched if Satoshi described the limited nature of the currency.

In fact, the earliest big investors DID correctly predict that reality. Today we call those people "smart money", and many of them are "Bitcoin millionaires".

Sure, a business can design its model around crypto-currency but most businesses don't.

And people generally don't like having to join to buy things.

Another thing a business can do is only accept crypto-currencies with a rapid confirm.

I think it is silly to assume there can only be one, and a bit dangerous.

What happens when there is a problem in the bitcoin network? You don't want single points of failure, you want multiple crypto-currencies.

And bitcoin will ultimately fail unless there are multiple crypto-currencies.

There's a lot of sh*coins, we need to find (or create) the few worthy and get them going so they don't drown out in the sea of scams.

wouldn't it be fairly easy for a merchant wallet to check for this type of thing.  If any of the above scenarios are true, then the customer would have to wait for full confirmation.  Basically, wait 10 seconds, have the merchant wallet check for double spends.  10 seconds is enough of a head start that the first transaction should be propagated to enough of the network to make double spending unpractical.

Satoshi addressed this here. Are there any flaws in his plan?:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3819

There are a million ways to avoid these risks. For example my grocery store is a co-op and requires membership. If I were to pay with bitcoins I'm sure they would just let me walk out. If it was a fraudulent transaction, they know where to find me. I also never have had to wait for confirmation at a restaurant.

Think about personal checks, for example. That is nothing more than an I.O.U. The seller has no way of knowing if it is real or if I have money in my account. This is a non-issue as far as I can see.  

Bitcoin isnt made to be a tool for grocery shopping, but for the store of value, and transactions of value, like sending money across the globe.
Sadly, bitcoin developers failed miserably so far, and the fact that there are only 3 of them full time, on an 8 billion usd market cap. is a pure comedy.

Bitcoin hasn't been around long enough to determine if the increasing value is an intrinsic property of the currency.

Some people bought and spent when it was over $1,000 - how long do they have to wait to see increasing value?

-=-

Joe empties his phone. Sends half a btc to his phone as dust inputs. Goes to Raley's, all his inputs are dust resulting in a very large kb transaction of fresh dust - which he doesn't pay a fee on. When will the transaction be confirmed?

Meanwhile his shell script detects the spend, waits for two failed confirmations (at which point Joe is long gone) and then double spends them with a transaction fee.

Miners see the transaction with a fee and confirm it. Didn't cost Joe anything, worst case scenario is some miner confirms the first spend and he pays for his groceries. Normal scenario, he's already in his car by the time the next block happens and long gone by the time the grocer sees 2 blocks w/o a confirm.

This might be an issue in places such as a grocery store, where the transactions aren't that high but move very quickly.
If you are buying something that usually costs a few thousand, using Bitcoin, waiting shouldn't be an issue for both parties. Buying online using BTC works well too.

Because volatility is temporary, while increasing value is permanent. For fiat scrip, decreasing value is permanent. I'll leave the math to you, detective.

That same hero can have a sharp eye for double spending granny's and stall them for 10 minutes....

We don't need any company, any regulations any outside 'company'. It would be disaster really. If something like that will happen bitcoin would be no different than paying with credit card or paypal really.

How about some "transaction processing" service that works together with the payment processors and the large mining pools.

The payment processor notifies this service of a valid transaction and this service would then notify the mining pools of the valid transaction.

The mining pools would agree only to include the valid transaction and not any possible double spends of it.

That way you could have instant confirmation of even large transactions (probably at a slightly higher cost).

There's no need to try performing a double spend, just steal the grocery bag

Not really a smart way to do it. You never know when there will be a citizen hero who wants to impress a checkout girl.