Author: Gregory Maxwell 2015-10-30 03:35:33
Published on: 2015-10-30T03:35:33+00:00
A discussion about UTXO storage took place on the bitcoin-dev mailing list in October 2015. Simon Liu suggested that users with the resources to operate large databases should be allowed to do so in order to keep up with the network. However, it was pointed out that consensus critical does not mean that UTXO storage must be right, but that it must be consistent between all nodes. It was argued that allowing users to operate large databases provided no value, as the data is opaque and encoded with a compression function that could change from version to version. Additionally, many alternative solutions are slow and could cause issues with falling behind the network even on high-performance hardware. Furthermore, additional functionality that is not sufficiently used will not be adequately maintained, leading to increased maintenance costs and more bugs.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T22:18:37.934135+00:00