3 ms·

How on earth can this 'fix' scale? Let's imagine a future world where all monetary transactions go through Bitcoin. So the only way for me to find out if my tr

• StavrosK 13y ago
  Don't you already have to do that? You have to download the entire blockchain to see if a transaction happened. The fix is just to look for a different attribute on the data you're already looking at.
  • jnbiche 13y ago
    Precisely. If you're offering any type of merchant services (and Gox does), then you already have to monitor all incoming transactions. All this means is that you have to keep a small list of the addresses of people with pending withdrawals, along with the corresponding Gox outputs, and then remove those addresses from the list as each block rolls in (at however many confirmations they determine they need).
• vertex-four 13y ago
  If you're running a full node - basically, Bitcoin-Qt or bitcoind - your client goes over every single transaction and verifies it as it is. In Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind, the client does not depend on transaction hashes to verify that a transaction took place, instead depending on the input/output lists. Any competently written "light" client does the same. Obelisk, written by the libbitcoin people, provides an address/transaction tracking system over the network that could be used if bitcoind does not meet requirements. Basically, this fix has been in place for a long time everywhere aside from MtGox.
• maxerickson 13y ago
  A service could watch addresses for you. (blockchain.info essentially does this for every address appearing in the blockchain) But yeah, bitcoin as implemented is way to complicated to want to deal with all the time, everyday.