Author: Gregory Maxwell 2015-12-06 05:13:15
Published on: 2015-12-06T05:13:15+00:00
In a discussion about behavior towards SPV clients, Rusty Russell and Jannes Faber agreed that only fully validated headers should be told to them. However, Russell pointed out that it is important not to penalize these blocks too much or it could discourage people from setting the bit. He also mentioned how easy it is for SPV clients to decide for themselves. Russell went on to say that it is crucial to tell SPV clients only about blocks that have been fully validated by network nodes. Although it is easy to spin up nodes with arbitrary behavior, it should not be relied upon too much. He further explained that unlike in the case of mining, there is no reason not to filter out unverified blocks from lite clients. Russell then discussed specific attacks to consider such as getting a broken miner to include both your payment and an invalid transaction, which other miners extend without verifying. To avoid this, virtually every lite client should establish a connection to many nodes. Peers should be able to specify if they want pre-validated blocks and fetch non-validated blocks. It is important that no one gets fed unverified blocks by surprise.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T22:30:08.954533+00:00