Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP proposal: Authenticated prefix trees

["Jeremy Spilman" <jeremy@taplink.co>]

Wow there's a lot here to think about. I'm pretty sure I haven't grasped  
the full implications yet.

I see it proposes to also introduce additional BIPs describing the use of  
the data stucture for stateless validation & mining, the UBC address index  
for "SPV+" operating modes, document timestamping and merged mining.

Can the BIP stand alone as a BIP without some specific changes to the  
protocol or end-user accessible features defined within it? It seems like  
an extremely useful data stucture, but as I understand it the purpose of  
BIPS is defining interoperability points, not implementation details?

Unless the tree itself is becoming part of the protocol, seems like its  
spec, test vectors, and reference implementation can live elsewhere, but I  
would love to read about BIPS which use this tree to accomplish some  
amazing scalability or security benefits.