Author: Matt Corallo 2017-03-27 19:32:30
Published on: 2017-03-27T19:32:30+00:00
The Bitcoin Core's Segregated Witness code has been clarified to clear up misconceptions about the behavior of the block download logic after segwit activation. According to a post by Suhas Daftuar via bitcoin-dev, nodes will not be able to download any blocks from non-segwit peers after activation, as it aims to prevent nodes from downloading an invalid block that may require re-download until the block is received with the required witness data. However, non-segwit blocks are evaluated under the same rules as pre-segwit software versions of the system and remain valid to all types of nodes. The behavior of not downloading blocks from non-NODE WITNESS peers is not a requirement but an implementation detail in the Bitcoin Core code. In response to a comment made by Eric Voskuil, Suhas explains that if a miner wants to continue mining after segwit activation, but using pre-segwit software, they would need a way to relay their blocks to a segwit-enabled peer. There are several ways to achieve this, including using the RPC call "submitblock" on a segwit-enabled node, explicitly delivering the block to a segwit node over the p2p network even if unrequested, running a bridge node which advertises NODE_WITNESS and can serialize blocks with witness data, or peer directly with other miners bypassing the p2p network. Despite the limitations, non-segwit miners' blocks are expected to get relayed post-segwit activation through the handful of bridge nodes that are currently running.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T01:11:20.012474+00:00