Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP 33 - Stratized Nodes

From: Amir Taaki <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 10:37:32 -0700 (PDT)

> 1) This is cool and useful (but see 3)

> 2) This is significantly less secure than validating an entire blockchain; it's certainly worth working out some use cases here in more detail than just a sample conversation. More on this below
> 3) What about discovery? Will a client now have the chance to look for NODE_STRATIZED clients on IRC? How do you envision a stratized server decides which transactions to relay/store? Or is it just a caching layer in front of a high quality blockchain service? If it is just a caching service, the question of cache hits / misses is an interesting one as well. 

Stratized nodes do discovery as normal. Service nodes are explicitly chosen like IRC servers are for IRC clients.

> 4) What are the economic motivations to run a stratized server? Other than cheating people of course.

None. Same as BitTorrent super-nodes, Tor relays or email servers. People don't need economic motivation for everything.

> 5) Seems like a 'send me everything for this source address' is going to save a lot of roundtrip conversations for what I imagine the most common request will be.

That's a bad idea. I prefer to keep each request minimal to prevent resource starvation and simplify the protocol (while shifting the onus onto the client). Also the history can be resolved with multiple services while the data is being downloaded and sorted.