Author: Peter Todd 2016-06-23 11:21:16
Published on: 2016-06-23T11:21:16+00:00
In a bitcoin-dev mailing list discussion, it was suggested that Bitcoin could embed a Lisp interpreter such as Scheme, reverse engineer the current protocol into Lisp inside C++, run this alternative engine alongside the current one as an option for fine-tuning and eventually fade out the Lisp-written validation code instead of the current one. The idea of using Scheme in particular was considered due to its small and minimal size, and ease of embedding in C++. However, it was pointed out that finding a suitable Scheme interpreter may be difficult and starting from scratch might be easier. It was also suggested that having validation code written in a functional scripting language like Lisp could be a better option than using the libconsensus library. The discussion also touched on the idea of using seals to prevent transaction hash collisions. The abstract notion of a single-use seal was explained and it was noted that it does not require transactions to have indexes and therefore would not require global consensus to implement. Additionally, the use of C++ in Bitcoin was discussed, with one participant suggesting that it is a strong language for what it does, although it is difficult to master and there are no other options due to consensus.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T05:49:39.664935+00:00