Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposed additional options for pruned nodes

[Daniel Kraft <d@domob.eu>]

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Hi all!

On 2015-05-12 21:03, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Summarizing from memory:

In the context of this discussion, let me also restate an idea I've
proposed in Bitcointalk for this.  It is probably not perfect and could
surely be adapted (I'm interested in that), but I think it meets
most/all of the criteria stated below.  It is similar to the idea with
"start points", but gives O(log height) instead of O(height) for
determining which blocks a node has.

Let me for simplicity assume that the node wants to store 50% of all
blocks.  It is straight-forward to extend the scheme so that this is
configurable:

1) Create some kind of "seed" that can be compact and will be sent to
other peers to define which blocks the node has.  Use it to initialise a
PRNG of some sort.

2) Divide the range of all blocks into intervals with exponentially
growing size.  I. e., something like this:

1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 8, 8, 16, 16, ...

With this, only O(log height) intervals are necessary to cover height
blocks.

3) Using the PRNG, *one* of the two intervals of each length is
selected.  The node stores these blocks and discards the others.
(Possibly keeping the last 200 or 2,016 or whatever blocks additionally.)

> (0) Block coverage should have locality; historical blocks are
> (almost) always needed in contiguous ranges.   Having random peers
> with totally random blocks would be horrific for performance; as you'd
> have to hunt down a working peer and make a connection for each block
> with high probability.

You get contiguous block ranges (with at most O(log height) "breaks").
Also ranges of newer blocks are longer, which may be an advantage if
those blocks are needed more often.

> (1) Block storage on nodes with a fraction of the history should not
> depend on believing random peers; because listening to peers can
> easily create attacks (e.g. someone could break the network; by
> convincing nodes to become unbalanced) and not useful-- it's not like
> the blockchain is substantially different for anyone; if you're to the
> point of needing to know coverage to fill then something is wrong.
> Gaps would be handled by archive nodes, so there is no reason to
> increase vulnerability by doing anything but behaving uniformly.

With my proposal, each node determines randomly and on its own which
blocks to store.  No believing anyone.

> (2) The decision to contact a node should need O(1) communications,
> not just because of the delay of chasing around just to find who has
> someone; but because that chasing process usually makes the process
> _highly_ sybil vulnerable.

Not exactly sure what you mean by that, but I think that's fulfilled.
You can (locally) compute in O(log height) from a node's seed whether or
not it has the blocks you need.  This needs only communication about the
node's seed.

> (3) The expression of what blocks a node has should be compact (e.g.
> not a dense list of blocks) so it can be rumored efficiently.

See above.

> (4) Figuring out what block (ranges) a peer has given should be
> computationally efficient.

O(log height).  Not O(1), but that's probably not a big issue.

> (5) The communication about what blocks a node has should be compact.

See above.

> (6) The coverage created by the network should be uniform, and should
> remain uniform as the blockchain grows; ideally it you shouldn't need
> to update your state to know what blocks a peer will store in the
> future, assuming that it doesn't change the amount of data its
> planning to use. (What Tier Nolan proposes sounds like it fails this
> point)

Coverage will be uniform if the seed is created randomly and the PRNG
has good properties.  No need to update the seed if the other node's
fraction is unchanged.  (Not sure if you suggest for nodes to define a
"fraction" or rather an "absolute size".)

> (7) Growth of the blockchain shouldn't cause much (or any) need to
> refetch old blocks.

No need to do that with the scheme.

What do you think about this idea?  Some random thoughts from myself:

*) I need to formulate it in a more general way so that the fraction can
be arbitrary and not just 50%.  This should be easy to do, and I can do
it if there's interest.

*) It is O(log height) and not O(1), but that should not be too
different for the heights that are relevant.

*) Maybe it would be better / easier to not use the PRNG at all; just
decide to *always* use the first or the second interval with a given
size.  Not sure about that.

*) With the proposed scheme, the node's actual fraction of stored blocks
will vary between 1/2 and 2/3 (if I got the mathematics right, it is
still early) as the blocks come in.  Not sure if that's a problem.  I
can do a precise analysis of this property for an extended scheme if you
are interested in it.

Yours,
Daniel

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