Re: [bitcoin-dev] A Commitment-suitable UTXO set "Balances" file data structure

[Bram Cohen <bram@bittorrent.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1994 bytes --]

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 1:28 PM, praxeology_guy via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

>
> merkle tree hashes:
> - array of "piece count" leaf hashes, hashing the balance pieces
> - array of "(child layer count + 1)/2" node hashes, hashing pairs of child
> hashes, or copying up if only one child
> - repeat ^ until the root hash is written
> ... except reverse the layer order. In other words, it should be breadth
> first.
>

A big yuck on that format. It should be something based on a patricia trie
to support incremental updates. Also if the things being stored are output
transaction + output number then those two can be hashed together to make a
consistent size identifier and be put into the merkle set format I
proposed, which is exactly the intended usage:
https://github.com/bramcohen/MerkleSet

- We could make BCP 4383 blocks, which would be 12 times per year, given
> block period was exactly 10 minutes.  But since block period is not exactly
> 10 minutes, and file names generated with period 4283 are much less
> comprehensible than file names generated with period 5000...  I propose
> 5000.
>

If it's of that order it should be synched up with the work difficulty
reset interval of 2016. If the format supports incremental updates it would
of course be possible to require them more frequently later.


> - Having a shorter BCP period would result in more frequent checks on UTXO
> set integrity, and permit new pruning nodes to start synching closer to the
> tip.  But it may require nodes to keep more copies of the balances file to
> satisfy the same backup period, and require more background work of
> creating more balances files.
>

With a patricia based format it would be possible to make much more common
utxo commitments, possibly as often as every block only trailing by a few,
and the cost of updating wouldn't be onerous and reorgs could be handled by
simply undoing the last few transactions in the set and and then rolling
forward.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2877 bytes --]