[Bitcoin-development] Reward for P2SH IsStandard() patch.

[John Dillon <john.dillon892@googlemail.com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

As you all know keeping the size of the UTXO set small is critical, and more
recently we've also had problems with distasteful data being added to the UTXO
set. (http://garzikrants.blogspot.se/2013_04_01_archive.html) Gregory Maxwell
has an excellent solution to the distasteful data problem in the form of P2SH^2
(http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.bitcoin.devel/1996) and Peter Todd
pointed out how we can implement it with the existing P2SH form. We're also
going to be implementing some kind of OP_RETURN <data> soon which handles the
timestamping and similar use-cases, again without UTXO impact.

Right now the only scriptPubKey form with any significant use is the
checksighash. Bare pubkey gets used by the odd miner, and by Deepbit due to
their ancient codebase. The former isn't an issue as the miner mines the txout
themselves, and the latter shouldn't find updating to be a big deal.
OP_CHECKMULTISIG is used by Peter Todd's timestamper, but that can be changed
to OP_RETURN without difficulty. However all that will (hopefully!) soon change
as hardware wallets and the payment protocol make hardware wallets worthwhile,
and we should make sure these protocols take the extra step of using P2SH
before we get locked into a bunch OP_CHECKMULTISIG implementations.

We also have the problem that the IsStandard() code accepts up to 120 bytes of
junk data as a pubkey, allowing injection of 240 bytes of *spendable* data into
the UTXO set with bare OP_CHECKMULTISIG. This capability has to be stopped.

Thus I'm offering a reward of 1BTC for whomever creates a patch to change
IsStandard() to accept only P2SH and pubkeyhash in a raw scriptSig, allowing
other forms only when used with P2SH. I'm offering a further 1BTC to whomever
gets such a patch accepted into mainline. It's a pretty easy patch, so I'm
asking that all core-developers (that includes you Peter) hold off for one week
to give less experienced developers a crack at it. If for some reason you want
to remain anonymous that is ok by me as well provided you assign copyright to
me. I do expect unittests. Should be about half a day to a days work.

Long-term we should be using P2SH with an inner OP_CHECKSIG for most addresses
as it's a 1 byte savings. Change addresses can have this done first, although
bitcoinj support will help so that satoshidice and similar sites can pay to
P2SH change. As for multisig's P2SH overhead for a 1-of-2 and 2-of-2 and
3-of-3, is 10%, 8.6% and 6.2% respectively, all pretty minor, especially if you
assume the blocksize limit will be raised.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)

iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJR4vX+AAoJEEWCsU4mNhiPg/EIAKWFaMsugbY4zZ+dpgnaTcUr
D1ZnY5PogETVqcwuXdVdHe2zCUcBhejsBe8ic9vp8OnttXTxo8uXJp9xBuq9VYBN
vXMyGKtxacLL5WS5ShAWnWS47xLf9wnKCJSGX0nqaETIQEUgqCMjTGspZNOpC9W0
fKBIDi4cZbpXn1EQx45v9vplZhFg+vBQV/Ia2/5rjZLPFvdqZoSBruOVTB/X2SDU
Hq36DQkRFblp/s3Ktv9c3yUQ8HocRIXD8jKRsE+uCNfEeI2b9oLpPp1cPsOvjveI
McJnHod8EDzxwbm6abK2cxHWBpGmBa5AABsRmQfpJK+u7GDQoPqzfJ68M1otZjk=
=uP4n
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----