{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2014-04-23\n📝 Original message:On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Adam Ritter \u003caritter at gmail.com\u003e wrote:\n\n\u003e Isn't a faster blockchain for transactions (maybe as a sidechain) solving\n\u003e the problem? If there would be a safe way for 0-confirmation transactions,\n\u003e the Bitcoin blockchain wouldn't even be needed.\n\u003e\n\nThe 10 minute average comes from a desire to balance wasted work due to\nnatural chain splits with latency. With a very fast block interval you end\nup with lots of forks and things take longer to converge, also, it can make\nattacks easier because an attacker is building on his own blocks so he\ndoesn't suffer propagation delays and the attendant splits.\n\nIt's not clear you can just make a faster block chain. 10 minutes is\nsomewhat arbitrary, it could be 5 minutes and the system would still work,\nbut it probably can't be 5 seconds.\n\nUnfortunately for best physical-world usability you really need very fast\npayments. A few seconds is competitive with modern credit cards. The new\ncontactless cards seem to be able to reliably manage \u003c1 sec which is\nimpressive. Waiting for blocks in a block chain can't really work. Waiting\nfor propagation can work and has been working so far. Hence, the question\nof how that mechanism can be kept working in the face of malicious miners,\nbefore you end up having to fall back to trusted third parties and\nrecentralisation.\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20140423/642547fe/attachment.html\u003e"}