Published on: 2017-12-18T21:58:58+00:00
The discussion on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list revolves around the use and necessity of Bitcoin witnesses. Witnesses are used to authenticate updates to the UTXO set, but once they have been buried deep enough in the blockchain, they are no longer needed as consensus has formed around the UTXO set update. The question arises if sign-to-contract protocols can work in a witnessless environment. While witnesses are required for SPV nodes validating these protocols, it is argued that full nodes do not need to download witnesses when they skip signature verification for blocks earlier than X, as their purpose is mainly to be able to send witnesses to other nodes and verify the witness root hash of the blocks.Kalle Rosenbaum suggests the concept of witnessless nodes, which would only be witnessless for blocks up to X and would not download witnesses but instead send witnessless blocks to peers. This would allow witnessless nodes to sync faster, provide full service to SPV wallets and local wallets, serve blocks to other witnessless nodes with the same or higher assumevalid block, and potentially even serve blocks to non-segwit nodes. However, there is a concern that implementing witnessless nodes could divide the network in two parts, one witnessless and one with full nodes, with few connections between the parts.There is further debate on the mailing list about the importance of downloading witnesses for initial block download and whether witnessless nodes could provide benefits such as faster syncing and serving blocks to other nodes. However, concerns are raised about the potential risk of dividing the network into two parts with limited connectivity. The reasons for not implementing witnessless nodes are not fully addressed in the discussion.Overall, the discussion highlights the ongoing debate and considerations surrounding the use of witnesses and the potential benefits and risks of implementing witnessless nodes in the Bitcoin network.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T22:20:16.458943+00:00