Author: Dave Scotese 2019-04-03 21:39:32
Published on: 2019-04-03T21:39:32+00:00
The Bitcoin community is discussing a proposal called 'assumeutxo' that would allow nodes to initialize using a serialized version of the UTXO set rendered by another node at some predetermined height. This proposal could allow fully validating clients to run on modest hardware under limited bandwidth constraints, which would enable modest clients to transact under a security model that closely resembles full validation within minutes instead of hours or days. However, there are concerns regarding the security implications of this proposal. An attacker could trick users into transacting under a false history if the user accepts a bad '-assumeutxo' parameter and then supply them with an easily made UTXO snapshot containing false coin assignment. For this reason, the proposal suggests not allowing its specification via command-line argument.Ethan Scruples brought up the question of mandatory UTXO commitments soft forked into Bitcoin. If this happens, the clients would get the advantage of a non-growing IBD, which is a benefit that grows over time without paying little to no security price for this benefit. However, Luke's comment that it could lead to users trusting third parties (like developers) way too much is pertinent too. He thinks an honest abatement of that concern is impossible without teaching everyone C++. The developers as an open group deserve the trust we put in them because they're accountable.There is also a discussion on identifying blocks as "special" based on the ratio of block hash to difficulty requirement. This would provide the opportunity to popularize unimportant but memorable-and-therefore-useful details that could be useful for sanity checking.In addition to the technical discussions, the message includes information about the Xeon Silver 4116 CPU running at 2.10GHz, various links related to Bitcoin development, including a link to Marco Falke's credit on a specific point in the code, a video about utreexo, and a reference to Boneh, Bunz, and Fisch's research on accumulators.The author of the message also mentions that they provide some work for free to prove their value as a techie, and list their involvement in projects such as Litmocracy and Meme Racing. Additionally, they mention being the webmaster for The Voluntaryist which now accepts Bitcoin, and coding for The Dollar Vigilante.The message ends with a quote from Satoshi Nakamoto about playing by the rules.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T18:01:12.930495+00:00