Author: odinn 2015-10-14 22:21:19
Published on: 2015-10-14T22:21:19+00:00
A proposal for a new technique called Bitcoin-NG has been released to address some of the scalability challenges faced by Bitcoin. It is said that the technique can increase throughput while reducing latency, and can do so without impacting Bitcoin's open architecture or changing its trust model. The whitepaper provides all the details, while the core technique is illustrated in this post. Once a node generates a key block it becomes the leader, which is allowed to generate microblocks at a set rate smaller than a predefined maximum. A microblock contains ledger entries and a header. The header contains the reference to the previous block, the current GMT time, a cryptographic hash of its ledger entries, and a cryptographic signature of the header. The signature uses the private key which matches the public key in the latest key block in the chain. For a microblock to be valid, all its entries must be valid according to the specification of the state machine, and the signature has to be valid. However, the microblocks don't affect the weight of the chain, because they do not contain proof of work. The Bitcoin-NG scheme could be designed or implemented in a manner which supports Stealth sends, Confidential Transactions, or similar privacy measures. It is suggested that the Bitcoin-NG proposal could be added as a feature to Bitcoin Core itself, and the user would have the option to activate/deactivate it from within Core. It is assumed that it would be deactivated by default, but with the option to utilize. Code would thus be available to others as well. Although there are concerns about how the information will be managed and protected, the actual leader in NG is a key, not a specific node. This makes it possible to deter DDoS attacks by dynamically migrating where in the network the leader is operating.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T00:13:36.199938+00:00