Why Didn't Satoshi Think About Instant Confirmations? - page 2.

jonald_fyookball

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Quote from: bitllionaire on June 25, 2015, 06:48:49 PM

How could you work with a DECENTRALIZED blockchain wihtout spreading all the transactions over the nodes and making confirmations to be sure they have been properly spread

that's not what a confirmation is. a confirmation means it's been included in a block. blocks take time to solve.

bitllionaire

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How could you work with a DECENTRALIZED blockchain wihtout spreading all the transactions over the nodes and making confirmations to be sure they have been properly spread

knowhow

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Quote from: Lauda on June 24, 2015, 03:17:16 PM

Quote from: knowhow on June 24, 2015, 03:08:06 PM

well if those really goes forward we would see bitcoin on several more places then it is currently pay a coffe a dinner a pizza like with cards would be amazing

Please read the replies before writing. This is a common misconception with Bitcoin.
Transactions are almost instant (usually 2-3 seconds at most), it is the confirmations that are taking time. For example Starbucks could easily accept transactions with zero confirmations as their risk would be only a few dollars usually.

Quote from: hua_hui on June 24, 2015, 02:37:51 AM

It is a precautious meature! Satoshi probably haven't thought the 51% attack issues, which haven't been completely resolved yet! It just relies on the big mining farms' self discipline.

Wrong. He actually mentioned it in the original paper. Maybe the term 51% attack was used later.

Quote

The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest. If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth

Section 6: Incentive, last paragraph.
He actually even talked about it in 2008.

i didnt express corrected what i wanna say were the confirmations become instant anyway with fiat you eat drink and pay and done with bitcoin is a delay,soo maybe a reduce on the time of 1 confirmation or two would be enought

ajareselde

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Well by some logic; if confirmations were to be "easier" that would be the weakest link in the chain, since confirmations are in fact solved blocks since the transaction was made,
and if you were to have instant confirmation, you would loose that security. It's impossible to do the "hard work" instantly, that is, by current bitcoin state and the way it's working.

cheers

Scamalert

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Captain

Very few transaction need to be confirmed instantly.
I really don't see the problem by having ~10 min confirmation time.
No body is going trough all the trouble with double spend $1 for a cup of coffee.
Buying a house or car...... well, then would it be needed to wait for a couple of confirmations, not really a problem.

StevenS

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Quote from: jonald_fyookball on June 24, 2015, 08:38:58 PM

you can cross check against double spends with zero confirmations by querying the mempool of a few random nodes.

That is the answer! If a merchant knows the transaction is well propagated throughout the network, then the chance of a double-spend transaction being accepted is very small.

JarvisTechnology

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Quote from: sgk on June 23, 2015, 12:06:42 PM

Well... not actually "instant", but he could have though of 'faster' transactions.

When someone of his skills and imagination is on his path to create a decentralized digital currency, how is the transaction times are not given the most important thought process? I'm sure it isn't hard to imagine instant transactions in today's worls when email is the medium of daily communication which delivers messages in matter of seconds?

In this ERA where every thing has been put on just "One Click" .
Then why not BITCOIN ?

As it is peer-to-peer currency,and it will get more popular in next years where all wants to get their instant result.

Amph

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Quote from: Kakmakr on June 25, 2015, 03:50:12 AM

Some of the gambling sites I use allow for 1 confirmation to except the transaction or deposit. So for me it is not such a big issue. I will agree with you that it would become a problem if I had to pay for a cup of Java and by the time the confirmation comes through the coffee will be cold. On smaller transactions this might become a bigger problem.

sidechain can solve this issue without any problem, i don't see other solution, because the block confirmation time will never be changed in the future, so the other way is playing with another chain, unless some one can come up with something more efficient

Kakmakr

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Some of the gambling sites I use allow for 1 confirmation to except the transaction or deposit. So for me it is not such a big issue. I will agree with you that it would become a problem if I had to pay for a cup of Java and by the time the confirmation comes through the coffee will be cold. On smaller transactions this might become a bigger problem.

jonald_fyookball

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Quote from: okae on June 24, 2015, 06:01:58 AM

The problem is that confirmations cant be instant, thats basic, it need some times to the network to confirm it, i think he mean that satoshis should think on a faster way.

btw we can always think on a better/faster way to made it yes?

you can cross check against double spends with zero confirmations by querying the mempool of a few random nodes.

satnof

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Bitcoin is instant. However if you accept transactions without confirmations by miners, you would be taking the burden of proof on yourself and that's the problem with Bitcoin malleability. Think mt.Gox

Cheers

Lauda

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Terminated.

Quote from: knowhow on June 24, 2015, 03:08:06 PM

well if those really goes forward we would see bitcoin on several more places then it is currently pay a coffe a dinner a pizza like with cards would be amazing

Please read the replies before writing. This is a common misconception with Bitcoin.
Transactions are almost instant (usually 2-3 seconds at most), it is the confirmations that are taking time. For example Starbucks could easily accept transactions with zero confirmations as their risk would be only a few dollars usually.

Quote from: hua_hui on June 24, 2015, 02:37:51 AM

It is a precautious meature! Satoshi probably haven't thought the 51% attack issues, which haven't been completely resolved yet! It just relies on the big mining farms' self discipline.

Wrong. He actually mentioned it in the original paper. Maybe the term 51% attack was used later.

Quote

The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest. If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth

Section 6: Incentive, last paragraph.
He actually even talked about it in 2008.

knowhow

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well if those really goes forward we would see bitcoin on several more places then it is currently pay a coffe a dinner a pizza like with cards would be amazing

ShetKid

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Quote from: okae on June 24, 2015, 06:01:58 AM

The problem is that confirmations cant be instant, thats basic, it need some times to the network to confirm it, i think he mean that satoshis should think on a faster way.

btw we can always think on a better/faster way to made it yes?

SInce there exists payments systems like Ripple, there wasn't anything that would stop it from being confirmed immediately. It definitely could have been implemented.

herzmeister

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Quote from: SmartIphone on June 23, 2015, 12:54:51 PM

I read somewhere(cant remember now) that Crypto 2.0 has instant transactions like stellar, ripple that's why bitcoin should be updated to 2.0

ripple and stellar work differently. they don't have a blockchain, their design works more like a state machine tracking and updating the amounts in each user account. though they're not technically as centralized as other posters here suggest, these instant transactions come at the cost of privacy. creating more than one account per user is discouraged (because it costs XRPs). you can't create a new address for each transaction. so you'll mostly have only one account with everything in it. further, guess what's happening? latest news is KYC and AML is being enforced on ripple by the authorities. just because it's technically possible. so no surprise there, really.

okae

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The problem is that confirmations cant be instant, thats basic, it need some times to the network to confirm it, i think he mean that satoshis should think on a faster way.

btw we can always think on a better/faster way to made it yes?

pooya87

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Quote from: MF Doom on June 23, 2015, 12:57:51 PM

I believe companies like coinbase make their transactions "off blockchain" so they happen instantly, then push all transactions out afterwards. someone correct me if i'm wrong

as far as i know wallets like coinbase that are working off the chain have instant transaction / confirmation as long as both recipient and sender have that wallet. and the issue that OP talks about still exist if one of them does not have that wallet (has other wallet than coinbase for example).

but this has nothing to do with bitcoin. it is like using a bank. you don't actually send the money (physically) you send a bunch of numbers and they receive those numbers and it adds to their balance.

sgk

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Quote from: MCHouston on June 23, 2015, 12:10:45 PM

Transactions are instant, are you referring to confirmation?

I have done a lot of transactions all happens in usually 1-2 seconds or less.

Yes of course I was referring to instant 'confirmations'. Even one instant confirmation will be very helpful in order to process some of the daily payments in retail stores etc. against the 10 minutes block time we currently have. There could have been a system where teh first confirmation took just seconds, and then more confirmations would follow in next blocks. This would have been very helpful for small payments.

Probably there could have been a way for him to think of shorter block times. Or probably he thought 10 minutes was good enough compared to traditional money transfer systems.

hua_hui

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Quote from: Amph on June 24, 2015, 02:29:14 AM

satoshi said specifically that faster confirmation are not needed because even in the case that a remote attack could be done with fewer confirmations, or with zero confirmation the thing that matter is node propagation

basically if the attacker has not enough nodes to propagate his attack, his attack would be useless

It is a precautious meature! Satoshi probably haven't thought the 51% attack issues, which haven't been completely resolved yet! It just relies on the big mining farms' self discipline.

Amph

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satoshi said specifically that faster confirmations are not needed because even in the case that a remote attack could be done with fewer confirmations, or with zero confirmation the thing that matter is node propagation

basically if the attacker has not enough nodes to propagate his attack, his attack would be useless

Topic: Why Didn't Satoshi Think About Instant Confirmations? - page 2. (Read 2981 times)