UUID to identify chains (payment protocol and elsewhere)



Summary:

The Bitcoinj project has discussed the creation of a more global naming system that achieves a balance between uniqueness and readability. The proposal suggests using Version 4 (random) UUIDs, with random bits extracted from the double-SHA256 hash of the genesis block of the chain. The example chain identifiers provided include mainnet, testnet3, and namecoin. It is noted that humans will still require a readable shortname string to make it usable, despite attempts to avoid it. Jeff Garzik from exMULTI, Inc. commented on the proposal, stating that it seems closer to Version 5 than Version 4 in spirit and suggests a bitcoin-specific version 6 may be necessary.


Updated on: 2023-06-06T17:39:07.087101+00:00