Topic: Reversible transactions on DLT (Read 126 times)

Exactly. It would be impractical for a cryptocurrency to reverse transactions as it will lose its credibility over the long term. After all, crypto was meant to be used as digital cash. With physical cash, you cannot reverse transactions at all (unless it's a credit/debit card). The same things happens with major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum where transactions are final no matter what.

Still though, it's interesting to see a cryptocurrency implementing reverse transactions (like Reversecoin) as it will allow people to protect their funds against malicious actors. We all know how scammers have been largely prominent within the crypto space. By reversing transactions, you could easily get your money back without fear of losing it all. Everything will work in the same way as traditional payment processors like PayPal, VISA, and MasterCard. Perhaps, the best way this will work in a cryptocurrency would be via the centralized route where a middleman exists (sort of an escrow) that would reverse the transactions for you.

Nonetheless, as Blockchain technology promises immutability, I don't see reversible transactions going anywhere. This might only become adopted by government-issued cryptocurrencies, sometime in the future. Just my opinion

Cryptocurrencies aims to be the future of payments and when reversible coins and transactions are implemented, it will lose it's integrity, for example, imagine getting paid for a service and after completing the service, your payment is reversed and you end up having nothing, this totally defeats the fundamentals of blockchain technology.

Ever since Blockchain technology was created, we've seen how transactions remain immutable as miners and nodes agree on specified consensus rules. To date, Bitcoin has kept every transaction immutable since launch, making it a trustworthy cryptocurrency for the world. However, we've seen the case where Blockchain transactions have been reverted at will. A good example of this is Ethereum, where transactions were reverted in order to protect investors from the DAO hack. Many people did not agree with this, effectively creating an alternative Blockchain named Ethereum Classic.

Most recently, I did my own research, and found out a cryptocurrency project named "Reversecoin" (check here: http://www.reversecoin.org/) that provides people the ability to revert transactions in case something undesired happens (like a scammer stealing funds, etc). This goes against Blockchain's own principles, but the reversible transactions feature proves to be quite handy to protect our money from undesired theft (like it is the case with USD). If practical, then I believe that the correct term of cryptocurrencies which make use of such feature will be "Distributed Ledger Technology" instead of "Blockchain" per se.

Nonetheless, do you think it's good idea for a cryptocurrency to have reversible transactions or is it better to remain immutable? For some people, it's best to have reversible transactions in order to protect their hard-earned money similar to how credit cards and payment processors work. But for other people, it's best to have immutable transactions in order to provide finality against double spending. What are your thoughts?