Bob pretends to send to Alice. Bob knows who the close group is, and attacks the network at those locations, pwning the machines. Alice receives falsified proof back from the compromised machines, and accepts the transfer. Bob spends the same coin again with Carol.
Responding to the OP: I was wondering the same thing myself, because the entire SAFE network can be considered to be its own āblockchain.ā
Trustlessness in Bitcoin is anchored to this mathematically indestructible and irreversible, distributed thing which happens to be a file.
And the SAFE network is that mathematically indestructible and irreversible, distributed thing.
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Yeah but the problem is that it doesnāt keep transaction records or balances and such and thus a blockchain is still needed to do decentralised book keeping. MAID buys you disk space pretty much literally but the only record left of you having bought it is that you are now the owner. There is no book keeping per se which is necessary when dealing with money transactions.
A real-world jam jar can contain some coins, or banknotes, without the jar doing any book-keeping, since the coins are objects and the jar is simply a container. The owner of the jar may, if he chooses, keep a running total of his coins elsewhere, or not. He knows he has enough for a purchase because when he reaches into the jar he find enough, or he might consult his off-jar tally.
That seems to be analogous to the situation with Safecoin.
What advantage is there, for financial transactions, to have the coins and a ledger in the same place? Why should a ledger, if one is required by a particular user, have to be one and the same thing as the coins?
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Sure and this is an analogy which works with MAID because it represents a resource rather than a transaction or a contract.
A blockchain gives you a ledger allowing you to keep track of transactions which occur over time but more importantly gives you the ability to create transactions. Without it how do you sell MAID?
You just change the ownership of the Safecoin from you to someone else. That is the transaction.
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OK, but your original assertion was āThere is no book keeping per se which is necessary when dealing with money transactions.ā My point in response is that plenty of money transactions donāt use a ledger.
You seem to have now narrowed your argument to only encompass those transactions-over-time that require a paper trail of some kind as proof of past payments.
A distributed ledger (blockchain) can serve that purpose. Digital receipts of which only the latest needs to be kept (Open Transactions, Monetas) will also do that.
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This is a non-trivial attack, assuming the network functions as designed. You canāt choose which group you join and you donāt know the IP addresses of those in a distant group.
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I donāt consider this a transaction since you are not transacting for anything, you are just switching owners. There is no value exchanged for another value, you just gave your coins away. If you consider giving someone something a transaction then okay.
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I assume you never pay for anything with cash then?
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When you pay with cash you are paying for something ā¦ Changing owner doesnāt pay the previous owner.
If thatās what you meant then letās use a SAFE-based bank or escrow bot.
You canāt have a SAFE based bank without something like a blockchain - assuming you want it to be decentralised.
Yes, you can, thatās what Open Transactions is about.
Although, granted that Open Transactions requires the Bitcoin blockchain. But that is already out there.
[EDIT] When I say a SAFE-based bank, I mean that its contracts and computation are in SAFE.
Okay but you would still need something like a blockchain implemented on the SAFE networkā¦ One of my goals is to write one actually but currently iām developing another side of the project which I deem more important (a programming language which works across the network with a radically new paradigm).
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Well, a bank isnāt the only way, an escrow bot (i.e., a smart jar for Safecoin) would be feasible. It would acquire reputation over time so that, although not trustless per se, it gets more trustworthy over time, and it is a pass-through entity that, increasingly with time and hard-earned reputation, doesnāt accumulate enough money at any given moment to make it worthwhile to run off with someones money.
Interesting idea. Not sure what to comment about it because I havenāt tried implementing such a thing myself, would be cool to see this in action. Do you have any code example?
No, it will be a while before Iām capable of writing anything for SAFE.
When you give someone cash, you are changing its owner from you to them. This isnāt complex stuff.
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What @et4te is driving at is that a transfer of Safecoin does not in itself include some record of an exchange. By contrast, an Ethereum smart contract might embody both the transfer of Ether and whatever consideration is being given in exchange for it, or some complex or periodic disbursement of the Ether, all done irreversibly and provable after the fact thanks to the blockchain.
But it isnāt necessary, in order to have secure and anonymous/pseudonymous commerce.
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