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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/17/25 02:57, iang wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:32245cd8-90bd-4c3c-aa13-ee8528a03432@iang.org">
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<p>If so, and please correct me if I'm misunderstanding, but I
think there is an intervening step:</p>
<p> 4. The value X (of #1 and #3) is now <i>_in dispute_</i>.</p>
<p>That's because there are two possible final outcomes, simply
put as:</p>
<p> 5.a Mallory is a crook and owes Alice X, and the transaction
3 is confirmed.</p>
<p> 5.b Mallory is a good guy, holds a valid contract for X,
Alice has done bad, and the transaction 3 is revoked.<br>
</p>
<p>Both of those can be automatically validated by the blockchain
in its verification phase. What can't be automatically
determined easily in code is which of the two outcomes is the
correct one.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>True. The whole thing is about dispute resolution, and that more
or less assumes that both parties take their claim to some court
or arbitrator whose authority they both accept. For example:<br>
</p>
<p>Mallory advertises a device guaranteed to kill all potato bugs in
the garden. </p>
<p>Alice pays X coins for the device. </p>
<p>Mallory sends her two blocks of wood with instructions "Place
potato bug on block one. Press firmly in place with block two."
This does not scale because it is not practical to apply it to all
the potato bugs in the garden.<br>
</p>
<p>Alice claims she was cheated. Mallory claims that his device
does what he said it does. </p>
<p>They now have a dispute. Without some way to access the identity
of the disputants, it can be brought to dispute resolution if and
only if both parties voluntarily cooperate to bring it there.</p>
<p>It does not matter if Alice now pays Mallory -X coins; even if
the block chain allows such transactions, and the transaction is
confirmed and entered into the block chain, Mallory will simply
never "spend" the negative txOut and Alice will then never have a
resulting positive-valued txOut that recovers the value she was
swindled of. Business-domain trust (parties can be held
accountable to their business obligations) fails because of the
absence of an arbitrating authority with cryptographic-domain
trust (ie, the arbitrator must be a "Trent" - a party who can
screw the others over by acting in bad faith). <br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:32245cd8-90bd-4c3c-aa13-ee8528a03432@iang.org">
<p>[The sad story of EOS and a dispute resolution mechanism baked
into the system...] Politically it failed, as the blockchain
world preferred instant and unrevocable transactions - not your
keys, not your coins was the refrain. So the block producers
changed the constitution to remove the clause to refer disputes
to arbitration. End.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed. I can't blame the community for refusal to trust a
"Trent." Even though most of them are ignorant of the long
history of attempted digital-cash schemes, the vast majority
failed specifically because cryptographic-domain trust was part of
the system, and for almost all the various values of "Trent,"
Trent did indeed act in bad faith and screw the users over.</p>
<p>My thought is that we don't want to create a new "Trent" because
we don't want to set people up to get screwed, but we need a
"Trent" of some kind because we need dispute resolution for
business-domain trust. I don't have a better idea than the
existing courts and legal authorities, who are closely monitored
and have a long history of *SELDOM* acting in bad faith, *OFTEN*
getting caught when they do, and *SOMETIMES* being meaningfully
penalized (disgorgement, disbarment, firing, impeachment, jail
time, etc) when they are found to have done so. They are subject
to oversight and consequences that are far from adequate, but
still better than anything we can implement or enforce in a
cryptographic protocol. <br>
</p>
<p>This idea will enrage most users of digital cash though; that's
exactly the same "Trent" that they distrust in the first place.
In many cases they still consider that particular "Trent" to have
screwed them over by acting in bad faith in the 2008 financial
kerfuffle when swindlers got bailouts but the victims didn't. </p>
<p>(Yes, I know the swindlers were required to pay it back. Yes I
know they actually paid it back. Yes I know the government made a
profit on it. But it was still a big damn smack in the face to
see the same people who'd caused the problem allowed to keep their
businesses and empowered rather than penalized by "Trent's"
response. That was unfair, and for a lot of people who lost homes
and businesses, that still hurts. And that hurt is at the
foundation of the impulse to use something besides the
institutions that those very same swindlers mostly still own.
This is what leads to the cultural norm that ditched dispute
resolution in EOS without any replacement or recourse. </p>
<p>I hate it, I just don't have a better idea.)<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:32245cd8-90bd-4c3c-aa13-ee8528a03432@iang.org">
<p>In short (and this was the literal analysis of EOS, being a
blockchain for business) my claim is that you cannot do business
unless you can hold the counterparty to account for eg debts
incurred unfairly. And the test of that is - how do you take
someone to dispute resolution?</p>
<p>And technically, that means being able to halt transactions,
pending resolution. So I concur, lack of disputable transactions
is a design flaw, if you're intending the chain to do business.</p>
<p>(And if not business, what use is it? Memes?)<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Worse. I would say the principal uses of Bitcoin (and the only
use of most altcoins) are speculation and crime.<br>
</p>
<p>Bear</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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