Author: Matthew Mitchell 2012-09-10 19:34:10
Published on: 2012-09-10T19:34:10+00:00
The discussion revolves around the addition of six new messages in the Bitcoin protocol. Two of them, getseginv and seginv, help in learning about the segments of a block that a node has. The other two, gettreelevel and treelevel, are used to receive a level of the merkle tree. The remaining two, getsegment and segment, allow nodes to download arbitrary segments of blocks. These messages enable nodes to relay segments of blocks before receiving the entire block, which was not possible previously. The number of segments could be calculated by node software using measurements of download speeds, latency times, the number of connections, and how likely redundancy is to occur.However, it is unclear whether these new messages will outweigh their cost or not. Moreover, it is suggested that distributing missing transactions on an as-needed basis could be a possible improvement at the protocol level. Nonetheless, there has been no research on this yet. Lastly, the Bitcointalk topic related to this discussion is mentioned.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T07:09:57.293897+00:00