Re: ecash speed

["James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>]

At 12:21 PM 11/9/95 -0800, jim bell wrote:

>I think that one thing that's needed is the concept of probabilistic payments.

Problem:  If the recipient verifies the coin infrequently, then someone 
can browse with slugs, accepting a modest probability of random URL
failure.

If the recipient verifies the coin regularly, then the cost of 
verification is still the same as ever.

Another poster earlier suggested the following solution, which seems
to me much better:  When you access the home page of the Playboy 
dirty pictures web site, you automatically buy a bunch of 
seemingly random numbers from them:  Every time you click on a 
URL, you spend one or more of their numbers.  If you have some 
left over when you are through, you can keep them or cash them.

This would mean two expensive transactions (high calculation and 
communication costs) per provider, instead of one expensive transaction
per click.

It also means that providers could make their tokens as cheap or expenisive
as they wished, down to microcents if they felt so inclined.

It also means that every shop around the world would be issuing 
their own money, making it impossible to trace anything in practice
even if everything was traceable in principle.

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