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From: "theymos" <theymos@mm.st>
To: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Protocol extensions
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:09:39 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1324228179.7053.140661013136581@webmail.messagingengine.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4EED416E.3010902@parhelic.com>

On Sat, Dec 17, 2011, at 05:27 PM, Jordan Mack wrote:
> I don't like the idea of a header only client, unless this is just an
> interim action until the full block chain is downloaded in the
> background. Development of these types of clients is probably
> inevitable, but I believe that this breaks the most fundamental
> aspects of Bitcoin's security model. If a client has only headers, it
> cannot do full verification, and it is trusting the data from random
> anonymous peers.

A headers-only client is much better than trusting anyone, since an
attacker needs >50% of the network's computational power to trick
such clients.

For everyone to keep being a full node, hardware costs would need to
constantly go down enough for all nodes to be able to handle enough
transactions to meet demand. If hardware doesn't become cheap enough
quickly enough, either some people would be unable to handle being full
nodes, or the max block size wouldn't rise enough to meet demand and
transaction fees would become noncompetitive.



  parent reply	other threads:[~2011-12-18 17:09 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 36+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2011-12-17  7:41 [Bitcoin-development] Protocol extensions Eric Lombrozo
2011-12-17 13:13 ` Michael Grønager
2011-12-17 13:37   ` Christian Decker
     [not found]     ` <CABsx9T0puk3CWH1cfNHMSVEoCPaLJJWNJ+H5ObCERZrzMbrTyA@mail.gmail.com>
2011-12-17 19:06       ` Gavin Andresen
2011-12-17 21:49         ` theymos
2011-12-18  0:44           ` Jordan Mack
2011-12-18  1:07             ` Jeff Garzik
2011-12-18  1:27           ` Jordan Mack
2011-12-18 14:16             ` Andy Parkins
2011-12-18 17:09             ` theymos [this message]
2011-12-18 18:06               ` Alan Reiner
2011-12-18 18:47                 ` Amir Taaki
2011-12-18 19:37               ` Jorge Timón
2011-12-17 19:28     ` Gregory Maxwell
2011-12-17 20:34       ` Christian Decker
2011-12-18 21:19     ` Stefan Thomas
2011-12-19 21:43       ` Jordan Mack
2011-12-20  9:10         ` Wladimir
2011-12-20 10:44           ` Nicolas Fischer
2011-12-21  0:47         ` Kyle Henderson
2011-12-21  8:50       ` Michael Grønager
2011-12-21 11:42         ` Eric Lombrozo
2011-12-21 12:41           ` Michael Grønager
2011-12-21 16:10             ` Christian Decker
2011-12-22  9:18               ` Michael Grønager
2011-12-22 10:12               ` Andy Parkins
2011-12-22 10:27                 ` Michael Grønager
2011-12-22 11:52                   ` Andy Parkins
2011-12-22 12:14                     ` Joel Joonatan Kaartinen
2011-12-22 12:26                       ` Christian Decker
2011-12-22 12:42                       ` Michael Grønager
2011-12-22 14:46                       ` Andy Parkins
2011-12-25  2:55                         ` Zell Faze
2011-12-21 17:17         ` Jordan Mack
2011-12-22  9:19           ` Michael Grønager
2011-12-21  6:19 Eric Lombrozo

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