Comment by acdha
18 hours ago
I think it’s less about reversibility itself and more the larger system within which it works. Banking works because the companies agree to follow rules so there’s a social context where if I make a mistake you will help fix it because the odds are fair that you will make a mistake at some point, too. In contrast, cryptocurrency is a political movement so the ideological “trust less” purity test matters more than whether the system is actually used. There is no technical reason why a system couldn’t have something like a settlement period to allow fraud reversal.
A settlement period wouldn't even run against the ideology, only the convenience factor (and implementation complexity, and perhaps transaction fees). More generally, I think a number of the issues with crypto are rooted in things happening immediately.
The ideology I was referring to was more of the trust-less design and “be your own bank” philosophy: many of these problems become easier if you have a third party who can do things like reverse transactions, but then you’re not getting rid of banks and are acknowledging that governments have power over the system. They do anyway, but there’s been a lot of desire to say otherwise.
An algorithmically enforced settlement period where the final result of the entire transaction is visible on the chain but reversible by either party doesn't seem like it would run against that ideology.
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