Reversible transactions - is there any sane way this could work?

[arhag]

Irreversible transactions are just a consequence of the design rather than a feature. IMO they cause a lot of problems. If it were possible to design a transaction type which was reversible (and fair) it could solve a lot of problems.

Irreversible transactions are a consequence of the decentralized and autonomous parts of the DAC. How is a DAC supposed to know whether it is "fair" to reverse a transaction when it doesn't know "truths" about the outside world and any "truths" fed into it are the opinions of some party.

Escrow and multisig really is good enough. You let the two parties involved in the transaction decide on the arbiter who gets to tell the blockchain whether it is fair to reverse a transaction.

[Shentist]

i don't see this coming, but maybe more use of multisig for security use.

Security is really the key for the massadaption. It is so much more convenient to outsource the security to a 3rd party and don't care about it.

[monsterer]

There's already escrow, I suppose we could make delegate escrow.

But yeah reversible transactions are the #1 thing the crypto space is specifically trying to replace...

I disagree. Crypto generally aims to let the end user own the value token for the currency. That's the primary driving factor behind decentralisation - you don't hold a IOU with no intrinsic value, you hold the cash in digital form.

Irreversible transactions are just a consequence of the design rather than a feature. IMO they cause a lot of problems. If it were possible to design a transaction type which was reversible (and fair) it could solve a lot of problems.

[Frodo]

What about somehow allowing transactions (or even a special transaction type) to be reversed by delegates, or even reversed by majority vote?

There's already escrow, I suppose we could make delegate escrow.

+ If it is only a special type of transaction it doesn't help against theft, as a thief would obviously not use a reversable transaction type. Switching completely to reversable transactions is even worse though.

Nevertheless if there should be demand for something like a reversable transaction type, imo it would be best to simply make it reversable for a % fee taken by the network.

[CryptoPrometheus]

Eventually there will be trusted 3rd party insurance entities (like squaretrade) that will offer dispute mediation services for a spread.

As far as involuntary chargebacks, I don't think this could ever be a feature because (what @toast said above).

[toast]

What about somehow allowing transactions (or even a special transaction type) to be reversed by delegates, or even reversed by majority vote?

There's already escrow, I suppose we could make delegate escrow.

But yeah reversible transactions are the #1 thing the crypto space is specifically trying to replace...

[Ander]

Having transactions being reversible kindof defeats the point.  It then becomes just like the current money system, where whoever is in charge of being able to reverse transactions has the power.


Of course, there is one way to reverse transactions: hard fork and get the whole community to agree.  This imposes an extreme cost so it could only be used in the gravest emergencies, which seems appropriate.


A better way to prevent theft is for everyone to use multisig.

[monsterer]

Seems to me that nearly every bitcoin theft/heist in history could have been easily circumvented if transactions were somehow reversible.

The trouble is, how do you implement this feature in a sane way? Having both parties agree to reverse the transaction is one way, but that doesn't help for thefts.

What about somehow allowing transactions (or even a special transaction type) to be reversed by delegates, or even reversed by majority vote?