Author: Jeff Garzik 2012-08-13 14:24:41
Published on: 2012-08-13T14:24:41+00:00
Stefan Thomas proposed a solution to enable nodes to announce custom protocol extensions for Bitcoin. Currently, the only mechanism the protocol provides is to use one of the 64 bits of the services field, which will run out quickly if everyone uses it. Stefan came up with a standardized way to announce custom protocol extensions without using up NODE_* flags and requested a review of his solution. Jeff Garzik responded to this proposal, stating that it is not a new idea and he had even implemented a pull request for service discovery himself. He proposed several alternatives, including modifying 'version' and adding a new "getcaps" command to be added in protocol version X. However, gmaxwell was unenthused and made a valid point about service advertisement: these capabilities are not advertised with CAddress, so how does one usefully discover and make use of them? Jeff's response was that if it is inevitable that someone will implement their own P2P commands for their client subset, some basic rules should be made about how to extend the P2P command set.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T06:55:17.825572+00:00