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The same properties that make it useful for ransomware make it useful for other things as well. Irreversible transactions lower transaction costs, it reduces t
by thebean11 5y ago
The same properties that make it useful for ransomware make it useful for other things as well.
Irreversible transactions lower transaction costs, it reduces the risk you’ll need to go to court basically.
- 300bps 5y agoIrreversible transactions lower transaction costs Blockchain transactions are not irreversible. You just need 51% of POW miners/POS stakers to agree and they can do anything they want to the blockchain. It’s the literal reason why ETC exists. Ethereum got attacked, some people thought those transactions should be reversed. So they reversed them. Others felt the hack should stay so Ethereum Classic was born. There will be more of this. Wait until the first court order and a bunch of regulation happens.
- thebean11 5y agoA court order won't work to reverse a transaction on the blockchain layer, only to force someone in-jurisdiction to send the funds back. That obviously can't be helped, but having the irreversible transaction on the base layer still eliminates a whole class of issues that cost time and money to solve. The big chains really aren't susceptible to 51% attacks at this point. If one is really worried about it, you can just wait more blocks before considering the transaction finalized. The DAO fork is a different class of issue unrelated to 51% attacks. It's true that a group of people (minority or majority) can fork a chain with whatever rules they'd like, but this isn't going to happen because some company regrets some purchase they made, only systemic issues.