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Comment by ljd | Hacker News Reader

I think people should stick to n-of-m checking versus this scheme.

When people try to undermine a system, two negative things may happen: 1) The system that is being undermined will be pushed too far and it won't be see as reliable and/or 2) The system that is perpetrating the undermining will get patched out of existence.

Both scenarios end poorly for the bitcoin ecosystem.

If you want to send a bitcoin but aren't sure you'll be receiving what was intended to be your half of the transaction, stick to n-of-m signature transactions.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts

EDIT: With that being said, I believe it's time for the BTC community to figure out how to patch this problem before it ruins zero-confirm for bitcoin.

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There are no patches for it.

Bitcoin is a system that is woefully misunderstood by many people. It is not a honey badger. It is at heart a system that takes a positive view on humanity. It's a system built on the assumption that the majority of players are honest and stick to the rules. In a world in which most people think long term and don't spend all their time trying to stab each other in the back, this works.

But is humanity really that way? Or does society require a small number of rulers keeping the ruled in line? Every day that Bitcoin works well, the answer shifts towards "no, decentralisation of power can work". And if BitUndo gathers significant hash power, the answer shifts more towards "yes, decentralised solutions can't work if they rely on an honest majority".

If you read the literature, distributed systems very commonly require some kind of honest majority, if only because the definition of "honest" needs to be set by something. There isn't really a way to make Bitcoin work in a world where most other players are colluding against you.

>But is humanity really that way? Or does society require a small number of rulers keeping the ruled in line?

IMO it depends on the specific ecosystem, and there is no definitive answer for this question. Some systems bring out the worst in people, some don't. However, as bitcoin is a financial system, greed is a major force that it must contend with. As the value of BTC grows, the incentive for bad behavior will grow with the rewards. For that reason, I personally cannot imagine that bitcoin can continue indefinitely without some sort of regulation. I'd love to be wrong about that, however.

It remains to be seen if BitUndo can realize their goal under the current framework. It's quite possible that the costs coupled with the initially low success rate and the desire for miners to protect the value of their holdings might prevent it from ever gaining traction. However, their efforts highlight an attack vector and there may be ways to disincentivize their scheme early on.

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