Core developer Jeff Garzik on the possibility of instant, secure zero-confirmation transactions: "hope is the denial of reality"

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#1

“That is what I hoped bitcoin would be. “universal payments” is both a laudable goal and a shopworn bitcoin marketing slogan.”

“The fundamental engineering truths diverge from that misty goal: Bitcoin is a settlement system, by design.”

“The process of consensus “settles” upon a timeline of transactions, and this process – by design – is necessarily far from instant.”

“Alt-coins that madly attempt 10-second block times etc. are simply a vain attempt to paper over this fundamental design attribute: consensus takes time.”

“As such, the blockchain can never support All The Transactions, even if block size increases beyond 20MB. Further layers are – by design
– necessary if we want to achieve the goal of a decentralized payment network capable of supporting full global traffic.”

“Bitcoin payments are like IP packets – one way, irreversible. For larger value transfers this attaches attendent risk of loss – as we’ve seen in the field time & again. The world’s citizens en masse
will not speak to each other with bitcoin (IP packets), but rather with multiple layers (HTTP/TCP/IP) that enable safe and secure value transfer or added features such as instant transactions.”

"“Bitcoin transactions are, by definition, not instant.
Zero confirmation transactions are, by definition, not secure.”

“We must build decentralized layered solutions on top of bitcoin, rather than stuffing everything into bitcoin itself.”

"It is foolish to think the entire world will connect directly to the P2P block network and broadcast all the morning coffees to all the miners. "

How can/does Nu tackcle with these issues?
Are there similar issues that Nu will face?

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#2

These are very good questions.
By design, Nu is satoshi-based so "“As such, the blockchain can never support All The Transactions, even if block size increases beyond 20MB. Further layers are – by design necessary” holds for Nu as well.

So how does Nu differ from bitcoin?
1- the peg
2- the PoS consensus system.

I think 1- makes NuBits a currency, much more than bitcoin and 2- makes it possible to build layers on top of Nu’s blockchain.
The economic design of bitcoin and the costs associated with mining make bitcoin’s blockchain unreliable as a foundation layer…
I feel Nu’s PoS consensus mechanism makes it much more likely to be a foundation layer because of the 0 cost associated with minting, the securing mechanism used within Nu.

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