Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: At no point was there a double spend in the longest chain
by
Tirapon
on 13/03/2013, 15:45:19 UTC
Basically, having to wait for 6 confirmations is already long enough to barely make it useable, and it turns out this is not (always) enough and it could fail due to a simple bug. Call it FUD if you like, but this is bad news, no matter how you spin it.

The way I see it, if the transaction is large enough to make it worth attempting a double spend, then the parties involved ought to be willing to wait for the full 6 confirmations in the interest of security. For smaller transactions, it would not be worth attempting a double spend due to the low success rate and the time and effort required.

Also:

In fact, you could easily implement a fork-detection system: whenever a fork(i.e., two branches with more than one block)  is detected, wait for more confirmations until one branch stops growing, this is not something requires protocol overhauling or even client reprogramming.