Author: Kalle Rosenbaum 2017-12-18 08:32:23
Published on: 2017-12-18T08:32:23+00:00
In a post to the Bitcoin development mailing list, Kalle Alm raises questions about the necessity of full nodes downloading witnesses for block validation. He argues that if a full node skips signature verification for blocks earlier than a certain point, then it is unclear why witnesses are needed for those blocks, except perhaps to be able to send them to other nodes or verify their witness root hash. Kalle suggests that witnessless nodes, which only skip witness verification for blocks up to a certain point, could provide faster syncing and serve SPV wallets and non-segwit nodes. However, he also asks whether this approach risks dividing the network in two parts with few connections between them, and what the reasons might be for not implementing witnessless nodes.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T04:33:54.179832+00:00