A BIP proposal for conveniently referring to confirmed transactions



Summary:

In a GitHub discussion, users expressed concern over the limitations of the current format for reference strings. The 14-character version is desirable, but it restricts the data payload to 40 bits, limiting the format to year 2048 and 8191 transactions. While Version 1 encoding may address this issue, current blocks are still approaching the transaction limit.A suggestion was made to use variable-length encoding similar to Bitcoin's variable ints, which would allow for a format that can handle very large blocks and future growth. Additionally, it was noted that Bech32 reference libraries can encode from byte arrays into the base-5 arrays native to Bech32, making bit-packing to the 40 bits unnecessary. Instead, one bit-packed byte could be used to start, with the first two bits indicating the protocol version (0-3). Overall, there are concerns about the artificial limitations of the current format and potential solutions to address them.


Updated on: 2023-06-12T01:12:37.892407+00:00