Some cryptocurrencies offer a feature for instant confirmations of transactions. What is required for these instant transactions to take place, how do they happen, and what is required for them to be implemented in Monero (if possible)?

  • > Some cryptocurrencies offer a feature for instant transactions. This may be semantics, but the transactions are instant. Its confirmations and immutability that takes time. – Ginger Ale Oct 8 '16 at 12:57
  • @GingerAle updated text to reflect this – sgp Oct 9 '16 at 2:11

Daughter chains are one of the development goals for Monero. One of these daughter chains could theoretically be used to allow for instant/micro/etc transactions. The idea would be to allow super-fast transactions (or whatever other feature) on the daughter chain, and then settle back to main-chain once a day (or some other interval).

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  • Can the current main chain not allow for instant transactions then? – sgp Oct 7 '16 at 20:34
  • If the definition of instant transaction is one confirmation as soon as the transaction is sent, then based on current rules the main chain does not allow that. – revler1082 Oct 7 '16 at 21:32
  • In the cases I know of, the instantness of transactions comes at the price of the PoW system, defeating the purpose of having distrusting parties agree on a common state. – user36303 Oct 7 '16 at 23:01
  • Would these daughter chains be less secure in any way: do they trade less confirmations for faster transactions? Would they be more susceptible to a 51% attack? Or are they simply faster because of their limited size? – Roy Prins Oct 8 '16 at 14:06
  • @RoyPrins that would be a very good new StackExchange question :D – sgp Oct 9 '16 at 2:12

Pretty much any layer 2 system, such as Lightning Network. Doing this on main chain is mostly a bad idea, as mainchain needs to be as secure as possible. Instant transactions have less security (or require some sort of "escrow" to prevent them from being exploited) and so they have to reside on top of the safe-as-houses mainchain.

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