Author: Thomas Voegtlin 2014-01-07 06:31:57
Published on: 2014-01-07T06:31:57+00:00
On January 6th, 2014, Peter Todd wrote to a Bitcoin developer mailing list asking if it would be possible to perform partial prefix queries on the UTXO (unspent transaction output) hash tree. Thomas Voegtilin responded that he had developed a Python-levelDB implementation of the UTXO hash tree, which was being tested and would be added to Electrum servers. Mark Friedenbach then explained that there were two tree structures being discussed: a 256-way PATRICIA trie and a bitwise, non-level-compressed trie structure. The former could index either scriptPubKey or H(scriptPubKey), while the latter allowed stateless application of one proof to another, enabling mining and mempool operations without access to the UTXO set. However, the change would require a complete shift in how clients and miners operate, making incremental implementation challenging.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T22:41:48.775659+00:00