In each series of The Bitcoin Masterclasses, Dr. Craig Wright delves into specific aspects of Bitcoin that have been misinterpreted by many, setting the record straight. In London, he talked about nLocktime, and in an interview with CoinGeek, he broke down how delayed transactions can transform air travel.
“We’re creating a scenario where we can have updating and ordered transactions that will finalize at a point in time,” Dr. Wright told CoinGeek Backstage reporter Becky Liggero.
While nLocktime was part of Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin protocol, BTC proponents sidelined it and turned to CheckLockTimeVerify (CLTV) as its [inferior] replacement. CLTV was based on the cypherpunk idea of not trusting anyone, but according to Satoshi, the real world can’t work without some form of trust.
CLTV also locks up funds, “and the world can’t work if we have to wait every time payments go through,” added Dr. Wright.
Unlike the permanent CLTV, nLocktime allows users to make changes and amendments along the way. If you’re creating a transaction on-chain with nLocktime, it’s not accepted by the nodes until the predetermined time. This gives you the time to accommodate changes that affect the expected result.
“What we need to do is incrementally improve business processes,” stated Dr. Wright.
He believes that with nLocktime, businesses can gradually increase their efficiency. For most enterprises, a drastic change is not feasible. However, dealing with specific challenges, such as garbage-in, garbage-out (which on average saps $12.9 million from U.S. firms annually), is achievable and welcome.
An industry that nLocktime and delayed transactions can impact is air travel. Airlines can sell conditional tickets, tapping into automated AML and flight information, eliminating errors and “making boarding a lot quicker.”
This is already practiced in a rudimentary implementation in private charters where everything is pre-screened, and travelers just walk in. This could also extend to inter-airline cooperation, where travel documentation and information could be tokenized and easily shared across databases. Last-minute empty seats could easily be tokenized and traded, he added.
Watch: On the very start of Bitcoin
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