Author: Jorge Timón 2015-09-01 23:57:16
Published on: 2015-09-01T23:57:16+00:00
In a discussion between Btc Drak and Jorge Timón, the topic of altcoins and genesis blocks arose. Initially, Btc Drak intended to focus on networks like mainnet and testnet instead of altchains, as he believes that it is easier to repurpose a protocol for an altcoin than it is to make a proposal work for all cases. However, if a proposal were to account for altcoins, genesis hash is not desirable, and an identifier would be better suited. Jorge Timón suggested that some altcoins (LTC and FTC) have the same genesis block hash, which is a design mistake in FTC, but it is solvable. In response, Btc Drak argued that two chains do not necessarily need to have separate genesis blocks. Although it may be cleaner, it is not a necessity. Other BIP proposals that account for alternative chains do not rely on the genesis hash but instead use an identifier.In the end, Btc Drak proposed using cointype like BIP44, which is “the only sane way” to him. Altcoins can easily adapt to this method. He also discussed how a world with XTCoin and Bitcoin, which share the same genesis hash, could be accounted for. If schism hardforks are used, a new “genesis block” can be defined to use for the chain ID. Terminology can also be adjusted to make things clearer, such as replacing “the chain ID is the hash of the genesis block” with “the chain ID is the hash of the genesis checkpoint”. Finally, each chain and implementation can start using unique chain IDs retroactively, and multiple competing registries for name -> chainID dictionaries can exist.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T21:17:14.656286+00:00