Author: Clément Elbaz 2015-10-05 12:08:27
Published on: 2015-10-05T12:08:27+00:00
In an email exchange between Mike Hearn and Jorge Timón in October 2015, Hearn defines "working" for a full node as verifying everything. He argues that if a node starts skipping bits, it is not really "working" according to its original design goals. However, Timón disagrees and suggests that assuming the hashrate majority has upgraded, a non-upgraded full node and an upgraded full will converge on what they see. Therefore, "the most-work valid chain" will be the same for both, and a non-upgraded full node wallet waiting for several confirmations will be just as safe as an upgraded one. Timón also suggests that nodes (of any kind) can use unknown block version numbers to notify the user or even stop working, the same notification mechanism one would use with hardforks. While Hearn believes that hardforks are necessary and should be deployed as soon as possible, Timón still believes that softfork deployment is preferable in many cases like this one. Hearn asks if Timón plans to produce a bip65 hardfork alternative to try to convince people of its advantages over bip65 but it is not clear how a new script operand can be included via hardfork. The context mentions that while the node gets correct results about the existence of every block and transaction, it gets incorrect results about the nature of some transactions and therefore, about the balances of some wallets.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T23:10:47.311491+00:00