Author: Pieter Wuille 2013-06-20 09:06:50
Published on: 2013-06-20T09:06:50+00:00
In a discussion about adding new fields to the Bitcoin protocol, Mike Hearn questioned the need for a new version field unless there is actually a new feature to add. He also stated that the Bitcoin protocol has never required messages to have a fixed number of fields per version. However, another participant in the discussion argued that the version in the version message itself should indicate which fields are present to make parsing easier. This would not prevent the receipt of messages with fields beyond what the parser knows about, but the parser could simply ignore them. They suggested raising the protocol version number to indicate that all fields up to fRelayTxes are required if the announced nVersion is above N. The author of the email, Pieter, agreed with this suggestion and noted that previous additions to the version message were accompanied by a protocol/client version increase.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T17:02:23.148432+00:00