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From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>
To: Dave Scotese <dscotese@litmocracy.com>,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] assumeutxo and UTXO snapshots
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 15:09:25 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20190413190925.peux7djbopy5xu3t@petertodd.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAGLBAhf1NZfT9TunhHAb==mFTfaAacjekQh6Pqn4yBS+90Zw6A@mail.gmail.com>

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On Wed, Apr 03, 2019 at 02:39:32PM -0700, Dave Scotese via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Every block's hash is smaller than the difficulty at that time.  Block
> 569927's hash was VERY small (started with 21 zeros).  The ratio of block
> hash to difficulty requirement (0xffffffff - difficulty, I think) could be
> used to identify blocks as "special," thus providing the opportunity to
> popularize unimportant but memorable-and-therefore-useful details.  How can
> they be useful if they are unimportant?  They are useful for sanity
> checking.  For example, if the drunken bishop walk (or some other popular
> randomart) produced by block 569927's hash looked like a face, that would
> be memorable: "The block with the smallest hash in 2019 (maybe ever?) looks
> like a face after the drunken bishop walk."

As hashest smaller than the target have no significance to the Bitcoin
consensus I'd suggest not basing any features on that property. It's just as
arbitrary as picking whole decimal number block heights, yet has the additional
downsides of being harder to compute, and being likely to confuse people as to
how the Bitcoin consensus works.

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org

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  parent reply	other threads:[~2019-04-13 19:09 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-04-02 20:43 [bitcoin-dev] assumeutxo and UTXO snapshots James O'Beirne
2019-04-03  6:37 ` Jonas Schnelli
2019-04-03 15:39   ` Ethan Scruples
2019-04-03 21:39     ` Dave Scotese
2019-04-04  3:01       ` Luke Dashjr
2019-04-04  5:59         ` Jim Posen
2019-04-04 14:36           ` James O'Beirne
2019-04-13 19:09       ` Peter Todd [this message]
2019-04-15  0:44         ` Dave Scotese
2019-04-04  2:48     ` Luke Dashjr
2019-04-04  3:04       ` Ethan Scruples
2019-04-03 19:51   ` James O'Beirne
2019-04-03  9:55 ` Luke Dashjr
2019-04-03 23:03 ` Jim Posen
2019-04-14 13:16 ` Omar Shibli
2019-04-23 14:17 ` James O'Beirne
     [not found] <mailman.2593.1554248572.29810.bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
2019-04-03  7:51 ` Nicolas Dorier
2019-04-04 10:27   ` Kulpreet Singh

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