Author: Eric Voskuil 2017-12-18 12:43:58
Published on: 2017-12-18T12:43:58+00:00
A bitcoin developer named Kalle Rosenbaum posted a question on the Bitcoin Developer mailing list about the necessity of full nodes downloading witnesses during initial block download. He argued that if his full node skips signature verification for blocks earlier than X, there is no need to download witnesses for those blocks. The reasons for downloading the witnesses are to be able to send them to other nodes and to verify the witness root hash of the blocks. Rosenbaum suggested that witnessless nodes could be created, which would not download witnesses and only send witnessless blocks to peers. This would allow them to sync faster and provide full service to SPV wallets and local wallets as well as serve blocks to other witnessless nodes with the same or higher assumevalid block. However, there is concern that witnessless nodes could divide the network into two parts, one with full nodes and one witnessless, with few connections between the parts.The post raises questions about the necessity of downloading witnesses for initial block download and whether witnessless nodes could be implemented without dividing the network.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T23:07:51.251377+00:00