Re: [bitcoin-dev] Why not witnessless nodes?

[Kalle Rosenbaum <kalle@rosenbaum.se>]

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2017-12-18 13:43 GMT+01:00 Eric Voskuil <eric@voskuil.org>:

>
> > On Dec 18, 2017, at 03:32, Kalle Rosenbaum via bitcoin-dev <
> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> >
> > Dear list,
> >
> > I find it hard to understand why a full node that does initial block
> > download also must download witnesses if they are going to skip
> verification anyway.
>
> Why run a full node if you are not going to verify the chain?
>

I meant to say "I find it hard to understand why a full node that does
initial block
download also must download witnesses when it is going to skip verification
of the witnesses anyway."

I'm referring to the "assumevalid" feature of Bitcoin Core that skips
signature verification up to block X. Or have I misunderstood assumevalid?

/Kalle


>
> > If my full node skips signature verification for
> > blocks earlier than X, it seems the reasons for downloading the
> > witnesses for those blocks are:
> >
> > * to be able to send witnesses to other nodes.
> >
> > * to verify the witness root hash of the blocks
> >
> > I suppose that it's important to verify the witness root hash because
> > a bad peer may send me invalid witnesses during initial block
> > download, and if I don't verify that the witness root hash actually
> > commits to them, I will get banned by peers requesting the blocks from
> > me because I send them garbage.
> > So both the reasons above (there may be more that I don't know about)
> > are actually the same reason: To be able to send witnesses to others
> > without getting banned.
> >
> > What if a node could chose not to download witnesses and thus chose to
> > send only witnessless blocks to peers. Let's call these nodes
> > witnessless nodes. Note that witnessless nodes are only witnessless
> > for blocks up to X. Everything after X is fully verified.
> >
> > Witnessless nodes would be able to sync faster because it needs to
> > download less data to calculate their UTXO set. They would therefore
> > more quickly be able to provide full service to SPV wallets and its
> > local wallets as well as serving blocks to other witnessless nodes
> > with same or higher assumevalid block. For witnessless nodes with
> > lower assumevalid they can serve at least some blocks. It could also
> > serve blocks to non-segwit nodes.
> >
> > Do witnessless nodes risk dividing the network in two parts, one
> > witnessless and one with full nodes, with few connections between the
> > parts?
> >
> > So basically, what are the reasons not to implement witnessless
> > nodes?
> >
> > Thank you,
> > /Kalle
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> > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>

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