Oddbean new post about login | logout I didn’t know this was possible and now my trust in ecash is broken. 😞
never tried it
Good. Ecash is a custodial system. It is exactly like having a Wallet of Satoshi, but with a massive difference... they don't hold accounts for their users, they only track issued ecash notes and spent ecash notes. This means that every time you spend, they have no idea who is spending, just that they received some ecash and need to perform a service. It's a step in the right direction, but mints need to prove themselves like a company like Wallet of Satoshi has done by building a reputation for themselves as reliable.
That makes sense. But why do I feel like scamming potential gets to the individual level with ecash instead of companies. Meaning I can be a mint and give you fake ecash and as long as you don’t have internet to verify it. I’m good to even double spend it and pay a couple people before they get the chance to verify, no? Or am I blowing things out of proportion.
Can you elaborate or explain the concern more succinctly? If you are simply referring to someone (not the mint) being able to double spend ecash tokens while there is some internet outage, then yes this is possible. However this does not inflate the supply, because when the internet is restored, the token needs to be refreshed and it is first connected, first serve. The rest will stop trusting this customer. Of course you can choose only to receive offline ecash from people you trust, and keep in mind that no other custodial solution is able to offer offline payments, but if they did, they would have similar issues.