Author: Corné Plooy 2018-11-27 15:54:27
Published on: 2018-11-27T15:54:27+00:00
The global/local distinction in feature masks is being questioned as it seems to have no practical use currently. The only potential reasons for keeping this distinction are to keep the gossip data small or for privacy reasons. However, interested parties can usually figure out local feature bits by connecting to a node and certain features may require extra data to be gossiped, which should be discussed per feature. Therefore, there may not be a good reason to keep the global/local distinction. For global feature bits, consensus about their meaning is required, but for local feature bits, only peers need to agree on meaning. However, if every peer needs to connect with every other peer, global consensus on local feature bit meanings is still necessary. There may be a gossip design where basic gossip data is received first and extended data is obtained based on enabled feature bits. Nonetheless, local features could become ubiquitous over time, making pre-filtering unnecessary and rendering the local/global distinction obsolete.
Updated on: 2023-05-25T16:18:01.754484+00:00