For POS transactions though don't you want it to be instant?
3-12 blocks is half a hour to two hours wait. The chart shows 30 satoshis/byte to take 40 minutes to a 19 hours total wait.
3-12 blocks is half a hour to two hours wait. The chart shows 30 satoshis/byte to take 40 minutes to a 19 hours total wait.
In Zimbabwe, you could lose a significant percentage of your cash's value if you delay a purchase. Taking a risk that the other side of the transaction might not be as big of a problem if you can look at their account balance before the transaction begins.
Sure, you risk getting caught in a double-spend that is rejected from the blockchain, but if the alternative is to hold onto cash or to lose out on a transaction in a tough economy, you might be willing to take on that risk.
(Given the insane hash power now maybe that standard can be lowered, but on the other hand it's not common to get a spot in the next block anymore.)
So point of sale was never a good fit for Bitcoin. What most real world merchants do when the amount is small enough is to eat the risk. Even if it's easy to double spend in practice most customers won't bother for a can of coke.
Merchant picks a solution based on who they integrate with - something like BitGo Instant[0], GreenAddress[1] or an analytics/fraud API provider that adds a risk score to a tx no different to a credit card transaction
That two-hour figure is the amount to get the transaction to the point of irreversibility so it can be re-spent without worry. The equivalent figure for credit cards is ~45 days and checks can take a week to clear.
But you're right, making transactions on chain is not going to be practical in an untrusted environment and it still depends on intermediaries.
Still, that argument was made against RBF and was enough of a hindrade to consensus that RBF was made opt-in. And it still is. So you are absolutely free to accept zero conf transactions, and take the risk, as long as you don't accept those who flag for RBF. Most wallets won't even make them by default (which in my opinion is stupid with the fees we have today).
The argument for a golden age before RBF isn't a good one. It was never reliable. And what little reliability it had is unchanged.