Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
by
figmentofmyass
on 23/04/2018, 23:40:01 UTC
Zeroconf is not built atop 'trust Wu, Ver and Wright'. It is built atop 'we don't have overwhelming tx backlog that makes doublespends hard to detect'.

without a backlog, it's still batshit crazy to accept 0-conf. people have double spent against both bitpay and coinbase; peter todd did it publicly once. if you close out the invoice before confirmation, there's nothing stopping the consumer from pushing a higher-fee transaction using the same inputs.

the "tx backlog" really seems like a red herring. 0-conf has an inherently weaker trust model. satoshi acknowledged this:
As you figured out, the root problem is we shouldn't be counting or spending transactions until they have at least 1 confirmation.  0/unconfirmed transactions are very much second class citizens.  At most, they are advice that something has been received, but counting them as balance or spending them is premature.

accepting 0-conf transactions doesn't mean trusting "Wu, Ver and Wright".....it means trusting the payor not to steal back his money from you.