Author: vjudeu at gazeta.pl 2023-09-03 16:01:02+00:00
Published on: 2023-09-03T16:01:02+00:00
In a recent email thread on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, the discussion revolved around the idea of shrinking the maximum block size in order to address concerns regarding blockchain size increases due to inscriptions. One suggested approach to force inscriptions into second layers is called cut-through, which was described in a topic on bitcointalk.org (link provided: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=281848.0).The concept of cut-through involves removing inscriptions from transaction chains while leaving the payments unaffected. For example, if there is a transaction chain from "Alice -> Bob -> .. -> Zack" and some inscriptions were created in the "Alice -> Bob" transaction, cut-through could remove those inscriptions while ensuring that the proper amount of coins is received by Zack.A participant named GamedevAlice expressed their understanding that the blocksize limit exists to protect against this type of issue. They suggested that perhaps the blocksize should never have been increased in the first place. With the lightning network gaining more traction and the current concerns about blockchain size, GamedevAlice proposed that people may now be more willing to consider a smaller blocksize in order to encourage more activity on the lightning network.Another contributor to the discussion, symphonicbtc, brought up the inefficiency of proof of secret key schemes and argued that allowing arbitrary data to continue would be less costly for users. They explained that in ECDSA, re-using k values allows data to be encoded in both k and the entire secret key. Furthermore, one can brute force a k value to encode data in a signature or attempt to encode data in the public key by brute forcing keys. Therefore, limiting the storage of arbitrary data in a system where security relies on secret keys being arbitrary data is challenging and expensive.Overall, the email thread highlighted the possibility of using cut-through to address concerns about blockchain size increases due to inscriptions, as well as the potential for reconsidering a smaller blocksize in favor of promoting more activity on the lightning network. The inefficiency and costliness of proof of secret key schemes were also discussed, emphasizing the difficulties of limiting the storage of arbitrary data in such systems.
Updated on: 2023-09-04T01:53:38.268141+00:00