[12174] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Micropayments, redux
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Wagner)
Mon Dec 16 20:11:38 2002
X-Envelope-To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
From: daw@mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
Date: 17 Dec 2002 00:46:38 GMT
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Matt Crawford wrote:
>> No, it doesn't. It doesn't take unlimited time for lottery-based
>> payment schemes to average out; finite time suffices to get the
>> schemes to average out to within any desired error ratio.
>
>Strictly speaking, the average will come within your error tolerance
>of the expected value *with probability near 1*.
Yes, but the probability of it being significantly worse than I claimed
(i.e., by more than a factor t) is exponentially small (in t). One can
easily calculate concretely exactly what the risk curve looks like.
I'll spare everyone the details and just say that I see no reason why
this should be a showstopper in practice.
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