Author: Michael Grønager 2011-12-22 10:27:32
Published on: 2011-12-22T10:27:32+00:00
The conversation is about the potential formation of supernodes in the Bitcoin network. According to Christian Decker, supernodes are nodes that verify all transactions and make them available to miners. He believes that as miners become more specialized, they are likely to own these supernodes themselves. In order to become a miner, one must either verify all transactions or have someone verify them for you. This hierarchical network would consist of miners/supernodes at the top and lightweight clients that simply verify transactions at the bottom.Andy Parkins presents a different idea where instead of duplicating all work, every node randomly chooses whether to verify any particular transaction. Assuming the network is large and the random factor is correctly chosen, every transaction can still be verified. Negative-announce transactions could also be added which allow nodes to tell other nodes that they think a transaction is invalid. Miners can then listen for negative-announcements and use them to decide where to dedicate their verification efforts. They then do not need to verify all transactions themselves and can dedicate their processing power to mining.
Updated on: 2023-06-05T00:50:51.606464+00:00