Re:Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month
by buttershakes on Monday July 17, 2017 @02:41PM
(#14791237)
SPV does absolutely check the block headers, which is all you need to do the proof. You can say that transactions could be omitted from the actual block chain, but not that invalid header data could be served that let someone believe they were paid when they were not or some other falsification.
Re:Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month
by kanzure on Monday July 17, 2017 @02:47PM
(#14791281)
you're talking only about SPV proof of transaction inclusion, not about the other fraud proofs necessary for the version of SPV theorized in bitcoin.pdf
here's a recent one: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0180.mediawi...
But why would a miner give an SPV user the data that proves a fraudulent double spend in the same block?
Re:Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month
by buttershakes on Monday July 17, 2017 @03:14PM
(#14791474)
Blocks aren't valid with double spends in them. You are saying the miner makes an invalid block by the rules in order to have a double spend transaction and then mislead the spv client with that information? I'm not making the argument that relay nodes are useless just that their security is being over stated, it catches this particular issue.
fraud proofs don't work because if you want to prevent someone from creating a fraud proof, you never send them the data that would be necessary to prove a fraud ("the block is too big! nobody (but some list of companies) have the bandwidth to support the enormous bitcoin network!"). SPV users don't require (nor check) the block data-- exactly the kind of scenario where you need in place so as to hide fraudulent double spends or other rule violations.
> the proof-of-work is by default a centralizing force
sounds like a good argument for regular pow change hard-forks. also to be watchful for economies of scale-- but economies of scale can hide pretty well i think, even after significant capital accumulation, it's an interesting problem.