Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Forget dormant UTXOs without confiscating bitcoin

From: Chris Priest <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2015 01:17:38 -0800

> In none of these cases do you lose anything.

Nor do you gain anything. Archive nodes will still need to exist
precisely because paper wallets don't include UTXO data. This is like
adding the ability to partially seed a movie with bittorrent. You
still need someone who has the whole thing has to be participating in
order for anyone to play the movie.

This isn't going to kill bitcoin, but it won't make it any better.
Every paper wallet would have to be re-printed with UTXO data
included. It doesn't even solve the core problem because someone can
still flood the network with lots of UTXOs, as long as they spend them
quickly.

On 12/13/15, Gregory Maxwell <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 8:13 AM, Chris Priest <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> Lets say it's 2050 and I want to sweep a paper wallet I created in
>> 2013. I can't just make the TX and send it to the network, I have to
>> first contact an "archive node" to get the UTXO data in order to make
>> the TX. How is this better than how the system works today?
>
> You already are in that boat. If your paper wallet has only the
> private key (as 100% of them do today). You'll have no idea what coins
> have been assigned to it, or what their TXids are. You'll need to
> contact a public index (which isn't a service existing nodes provide)
> or synchronize the full blockchain history to find it. Both are also
> sufficient for jl2012's (/Petertodd's STXO), they'd only be providing
> you with somewhat more data.  If instead, you insist that you'd
> already be running a full node and not have to wait for the sync, then
> again you'd also be your own archive. In none of these cases do you
> lose anything.
>