"Bitcoin Secret History": Bitcoin Forum Discussion on "Snack Machines"

Source: Hash Pie

Author: LucyCheng

Unmanned vending machines are synonymous with convenience and speed. Bitcoin is a consensus network where all confirmed transactions are packaged into blocks. If you combine the two, you will have a paradox; because no one wants to spend an hour in front of the drone waiting for the transaction to be confirmed, and the drone company will not want to give so many free snacks in vain.

This is a question raised by Bitcoin user Insti on Bitcointalk on July 17, 2010. At that time, the post was hotly debated in the forum. The first reply to Insti was the man who bought pizza with 100,000 bitcoins.

A post posted by a netizen Insti on the Bitcoin forum on July 17, 2010

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Laszlo said that for low-value products like snacks, we usually accept requests without completing transaction confirmations. That is, as long as the vending machine contacts the bitcoin node associated with it and initiates a transaction, the sale can be considered "effective." But in the end he also pointed out the danger that most netizens worry about-the double spend problem.

On the same day, laszlo replied to netizen Insti on the Bitcoin Forum

It is well known that initiating transactions can be executed immediately, but the problem lies in waiting for confirmation. Even if only one confirmation is accepted, it takes an average of ten minutes. If a dishonest user takes advantage of this gap to purchase another snack from another vending machine, then it can get two snacks without receiving any confirmation from the transaction, thereby causing losses to the vending machine (Netizen FreeMoney description of).

Reply posted by Satoshi Nakamoto on the same day

Satoshi Nakamoto did not think so. He replied that he believes that the payment processing company can provide fast transaction release through "good enough" (actual loss is lower than credit card) technology in 10 seconds or even less. service. As long as the payment processing system is connected to many nodes, when it gets a transaction, it can quickly broadcast it out and monitor whether there are double-spend transactions in the network. If a double spend occurs on any of its many nodes, then the transaction will be warned of an error, so the double spend transaction cannot be broadcast on a large scale. Moreover, in the spread competition of the double spend transaction, even if it is a second slower, the disadvantage will greatly increase.

A summary of some small machines on Twitter that use Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash to pay

Today, as Satoshi Nakamoto said, we have been able to achieve this near real-time buying and selling through payment processing companies or Lightning Network. But nowadays, bitcoin snack machines and other such as bitcoin cola machines, bitcoin flash machines, etc. are conceived more as a practice of self-entertainment for enthusiasts, or as a publicity means to prove that the technology is feasible .

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