Author: Troy Benjegerdes 2014-01-18 17:44:52
Published on: 2014-01-18T17:44:52+00:00
In an email conversation between Gregory Maxwell and Jeremy Spilman, the topic of how many bits to put in a prefix was discussed. The difficulty of choosing an appropriate number of bits was acknowledged, especially if transaction loads change dramatically over time. It was suggested that 0 or 1 bits may be sufficient for a single user running their own node, whereas a central service may require 4 or 5 bits to keep computation costs scalable. Maxwell commented that ignoring prefixes, the cost for each reusable address is only a small percentage of the full node cost, with computation being an issue for large centralized services. He noted that non-full nodes suffer more from just the bandwidth impact. Troy, a transparency advocate, raised the question of who would pay for mechanisms to keep coin flows private. He stated that it would double the amount of data needed per address, further centralizing 'full' nodes. He suggested that if socializing the cost of privacy is Bitcoin's goal, and giving the benefits to a few that understand it and/or have the resources to determine privacy providers that won't scam them, then he would launch a 'transparencycoin' with a modified code that explicitly ALWAYS re-uses addresses, and has miners and pools that charge more for addresses they have never seen before. He believed it would be more distributed and have about half the average transaction cost of Bitcoin because most people do not care about privacy if they get cheap and/or free services.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T00:09:05.054866+00:00