Author: Kalle Rosenbaum 2017-12-18 20:34:30
Published on: 2017-12-18T20:34:30+00:00
The discussion on bitcoin-dev mailing list revolves around whether a full node needs to download witnesses when it is not going to verify them anyway. The benefits and risks of running witnessless mode are also discussed. Eric Voskuil mentions that a block cannot be assumed valid unless it has been validated previously. In the case where a block has already been validated, there is no need for witness data for blocks you are not going to validate. However, this will make it impossible for anyone to validate the chain eventually. He adds that SPV clients don't require witness data as it is neither required to verify header commitment to transactions nor to extract payment addresses from them. Witnessless nodes would be able to sync faster because it needs to download less data to calculate their UTXO set. They would, therefore, more quickly be able to provide full service to SPV wallets and its local wallets as well as serving blocks to other witnessless nodes with the same or higher assumevalid block. For witnessless nodes with lower assumevalid they can serve at least some blocks. It could also serve blocks to non-segwit nodes.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T23:08:41.423688+00:00