On 5 December 2012 19:43, Gary Rowe <g.rowe@froot.co.uk> wrote:

> I would like to chime on on the user experience of the SPV client (in
> particular MultiBit).
>
> Without exception, everyone that I have introduced Bitcoin (which is a lot
> of people) have expected an "instant-on" experience. It has to clobber
> PayPal and credit cards or people won't give it a second look, let alone a
> second chance. SPV clients deliver on that expectation.
>
> Once the user has the great initial "wow!" moment then their interest in
> Bitcoin is reinforced and they tend to explore further, particularly into
> the economic theory behind it. Many decide to install the full node out of
> a sense of community contribution to the security of the network.
>
> Having a hybrid mode of SPV first then full node second should be
> something that a user has control over - it is their computing resources we
> are using after all and Bitcoin should not be perceived as a drain.


Hybrid SPV sounds like a good idea to me. Allows it to work out-of-the-box,
then slowly gets up-to-speed with the full network - working low priority,
or even not at all, if it detects a slow system or network link.
Another idea is always distributing the client with a checkpoint that is
only days old, then starting by pulling in more recent blocks, so it can
transact. Following that, it will pull in progressively older blocks as
time permits.