Author: Jordan Mack 2011-12-18 01:27:10
Published on: 2011-12-18T01:27:10+00:00
The author of this post identifies two problems faced by Bitcoin: scalability of broadcast messages and the resources required to sync and verify the blockchain. To address these issues, three distinct groups of clients are identified: miners, full nodes, and lite clients. Mining nodes would handle most of the message traffic, while full nodes would only receive new block information from mining nodes and share block data with other full nodes. Lite clients would not contain the blockchain or any broadcast messages but instead query a full client for all actions. To enable instant transaction notification without broadcasting to everyone, notification messages would be sent directly from one full client to another using aliases. The author is not in favor of header-only clients as it breaks the fundamental aspects of Bitcoin's security model since these clients cannot do full verification and must trust the data from random anonymous peers.A lite client would connect to a "trusted" full client over an encrypted connection, functioning as a remote control to allow users to send, receive, and confirm transactions. Full clients could reside on home computers or servers owned by the user or hosted wallets.
Updated on: 2023-06-05T00:51:31.104702+00:00