Author: John Dillon 2013-04-29 03:48:18
Published on: 2013-04-29T03:48:18+00:00
In a 2013 discussion on the bitcoin-development mailing list, Gregory Maxwell dismissed the idea of using BitTorrent to distribute the blockchain. He argued that tracker-less torrents didn't work well in practice and that integrating BitTorrent technology into Bitcoin would require additional software and opening more ports. Instead, he suggested that the process of offering up more storage should not take any more steps. The software could have user-overridable defaults based on free disk space to make contributing painless. Maxwell also expressed concern about nodes finding each other and the specific part of the chain without some structure to the network. Nevertheless, he agreed that they could build this stuff incrementally and that using Bitcoin to bootstrap the BitTorrent DHT would probably make it more reliable. However, this might cause commercial services that are in the business of poisoning the BitTorrent DHT to target the Bitcoin network.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T15:47:54.788984+00:00