Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Fwd: Service bits for pruned nodes

From: Andy Parkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:27:10 +0100

On Tuesday 30 April 2013 19:04:59 Jeff Garzik wrote:

> The format currently used by bitcoind would be just fine --
> blocks/blkNNNN.dat for raw data, size-limited well below 1GB.  Just
> need to add a small metadata download, and serve the raw block files.

That doesn't seem very generic.  It's tied far too much to the current storage 
format of bitcoind.

Wouldn't it be better to add support for more bitcoin-protocol-oriented HTTP 
requests?  Then any client can supply the same interface, rather than being 
forced to create blkNNNN.dat on the fly?

 http://bitcoind.example.com/block/BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
 http://bitcoind.example.com/tx/TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
 http://bitcoind.example.com/block/oftx/TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
 http://bitcoind.example.com/peers
 http://bitcoind.example.com/peer/nnn

Essentially: block explorer's raw mode but in every bitcoind.  The hardest 
operation for light clients is finding out the block that contains a 
particular transaction -- something that bitcoind already knows.

I'd like to see support for HTTP POST/PUT of signed transactions and block 
announcements too.

Andy

-- 
Dr Andy Parkins
[email-masked]