Author: Rune Kjær Svendsen 2015-09-18 19:05:37
Published on: 2015-09-18T19:05:37+00:00
The problem with the current state of Bitcoin's blockchain is that new nodes joining the network must retrieve the entire blockchain history, starting from 2009, to derive a UTXO set that they can use to verify new blocks and transactions. This requires significant bandwidth and will keep increasing indefinitely. However, if newly mined blocks were to include the UTXO set hash of the chain up until the previous block, then new nodes could acquire the UTXO set in a trustless manner by only verifying proof-of-work headers. This would save bandwidth for Bitcoin Core nodes, who currently need to send over 40GB of data to synchronize a node, but will now only need to send roughly 1GB. Additionally, it forces miners to maintain an UTXO set and verify blocks against the chain, rather than just building on top of the chain with the most proof-of-work. The only added step to verifying a block is to hash the UTXO set, which takes only two seconds and is a small sacrifice for the added ease of initial syncing.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T22:47:50.213699+00:00