Author: slush 2014-04-09 20:31:03
Published on: 2014-04-09T20:31:03+00:00
One suggestion made by Marek on the Bitcoin development mailing list is to integrate torrent download of bootstrap.dat into bitcoind. He argues that many beginner users are unlikely to learn how to download bootstrap separately and import it into bitcoind, and may give up synchronization once they realize it takes too much time. Marek suggests that downloading the bootstrap can significantly improve catching the blockchain, which could attract more users to run bitcoind. He notes that while he is not sure about C++, a simple torrent client in Python is only around 30 lines of code using libtorrent.In response to Marek's suggestion, another user named slush suggests that there may be existing bitcoind instances running but not properly configured for port forwarding, which limits their ability to contribute to strengthening the network. He proposes exploring ways to expose these instances to the internet or provide a self-test indicating that the node is not reachable from outside, similar to some torrent clients. Slush also mentions the slow deployment of IPv6 to server environments and wonders if there is a simple way to bundle ipv6 tunnelling into bitcoind to make any instance automatically ipv6-reachable. Gregory Maxwell responds to a comment by Justus Ranvier regarding resource usage problems with existing implementations, emphasizing that this mailing list is about developing protocol and implementations, including improving their efficiency. Maxwell argues that under current network rules, full nodes can be operated with vastly less resources than current implementations use, and that improvements in implementation efficiency are needed. He clarifies that discussions on the mailing list prioritize improvements over existing implementations.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T19:11:57.123761+00:00