From: Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail•com>
To: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org>
Cc: bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net,
Andreas Schildbach <andreas@schildbach•de>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] HTTP REST API for bitcoind
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 11:00:24 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <201307231100.24538.andyparkins@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20130723094703.GA25900@savin>
On Tuesday 23 July 2013 10:47:03 Peter Todd wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 10:30:13AM +0100, Andy Parkins wrote:
> > One additional URL makes this pretty much perfect:
> > GET /rest/block-with-tx/TX-HASH
> >
> > Construction of the transaction-hash-to-block database is something the
> > full client's have to do anyway, so this query is no harder than the
> > others for them to supply; but suddenly makes it possible for an SPV
> > client to trace the providence of any transaction without needing to
> > maintain the entire chain.
> The REST API has nothing to do with SPV clients; it's similar to the RPC
> interface and won't be exposed to the network as a whole.
Yes; I know that. I'm saying that it would make it easier for SPV (and other
lightweight clients) for that matter.
> Increasing the resource usage by SPV clients on full nodes is undesirable;
I don't think that's thinking big enough. What I imagine is that making it
easier and easier to store a partial blockchain would result in lower demand
on full nodes.
I might run a client that has only fetched blocks that contain transactions
needed to verify my balances, right back to the genesis block. That will be
some small subset of the block chain and will take me very little resource to
maintain. I join the network and am my client is willing to verify based on
information I have, or supply (by REST or bitcoin protocol) blocks. Imagine
then that everyone with a wallet were doing this. The blockchain would be
distributed massively. Obviously the miners would still be keeping the entire
chain, but we'd have a lot more nodes in the network, each contributing a
little bit and so reducing the load on the full nodes.
> In any case UTXO data currently requires you to have full trust in
> whomever is providing you with it, and that situation will continue
> until UTXO commitments are implemented - if they are implemented.
Almost; because you can go and ask someone else the same question, it's pretty
easy to check if you're being lied to. Also, it's far easier to maintain a
headers-only block chain. When you fetch your relevant block subset, you can
easily see that they are real blocks in your headers-only blockchain; and so
it's pretty much impossible to lie to "give me the block containing
transaction X".
Andy
--
Dr Andy Parkins
andyparkins@gmail•com
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2013-07-23 10:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2013-07-22 19:42 Jeff Garzik
2013-07-22 22:06 ` Michael Hendricks
2013-07-23 8:27 ` Andreas Schildbach
2013-07-23 8:45 ` Michael Gronager
2013-07-23 9:37 ` Pieter Wuille
2013-07-23 9:53 ` Michael Gronager
2013-07-23 10:17 ` Andreas Schildbach
2013-07-23 10:27 ` Pieter Wuille
2013-07-23 9:30 ` Andy Parkins
2013-07-23 9:42 ` Pieter Wuille
2013-07-23 9:52 ` Andy Parkins
2013-07-23 9:56 ` Pieter Wuille
2013-07-23 10:02 ` Andy Parkins
2013-07-23 10:06 ` Pieter Wuille
2013-07-23 9:47 ` Peter Todd
2013-07-23 10:00 ` Andy Parkins [this message]
2013-07-23 10:17 ` Peter Todd
2013-07-23 11:45 ` Andy Parkins
2013-07-23 10:19 ` Pieter Wuille
2013-07-23 10:29 ` Andreas Schildbach
2013-07-23 10:36 ` Pieter Wuille
2013-07-23 15:48 ` Michael Hendricks
2013-07-23 19:36 ` Mark Friedenbach
2013-08-10 20:30 ` Rune Kjær Svendsen
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=201307231100.24538.andyparkins@gmail.com \
--to=andyparkins@gmail$(echo .)com \
--cc=andreas@schildbach$(echo .)de \
--cc=bitcoin-development@lists$(echo .)sourceforge.net \
--cc=pete@petertodd$(echo .)org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox