Chapter 5. Transactions

The cookie token payments you and your coworkers have been making so far have some serious problems. The worst is that Lisa can steal, which worries some new people. They’re hesitant to use the system if they know Lisa can steal from them.

This chapter will focus mainly on transactions (figure 5.1): pieces of data that formalize how users send payments to Lisa. Transactions replace the old email to Lisa. They’ll be stored as is in the spreadsheet instead of using the current To, From, and CT scheme. This will make it impossible for Lisa to steal other people’s money because anyone can now verify all payments in the spreadsheet.

In this chapter, we’ll go deep on transactions and explore how they’re programmable, meaning they’re flexible as far as what you can do with them. For example, multisignature transactions can require two signatures out of three possible signatures, to spend money shared among three people.

After this chapter, the system will have changed a lot—in how wallets create payments, how Lisa verifies payments, and how payments are stored. Most important, everyone will be able to verify payments in the spreadsheet.

Problems with the old system

Paying using a transaction

Script

Fancy payment types

More stuff in transactions

Rewards and coin creation

Trust in Lisa

Recap

Exercises

Summary