Re: [bitcoin-dev] Alternative chain support for payment protocol

From: "John L. Jegutanis" <giannis@coinomi•com>
To: bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Alternative chain support for payment protocol
Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2015 20:42:12 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CADv+LCxoKwDvE0RBUHzfZ-Pp6nz66s_EpyKQ5jr-B5o+zGgHeA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CADv+LCxF5MoSFcCiqXnXXsfE5KvJmL0RQ4pOhmM-5eb2TH-ncg@mail.gmail.com>

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Another possibility to support side|alt-chains is the bip44 coin type
registry.

A problem that hasn't been mentioned is that a coin can extend the protocol
in an incompatible way (different protocol buffer format) so just changing
the network field in the PaymentDetails message will not work. A better
approach is to add an optional coin type field to the PaymentRequest and
serialize the incompatible PaymentDetails to the serialized_payment_details
field.

To support a future testnet4 in PaymentDetails we only need to add a new
network string like "test4".
On Aug 9, 2015 18:23, "Ross Nicoll via bitcoin-dev" <
bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

I'm cautious of using human-meaningful identifiers, especially any that
might require a central repository, due to name collisions. Examples that
could be complicated include BitcoinDark, Litedoge, and other names that
base on existing coins. I think the ability to differentiate between test
networks is also useful.

Could certainly just use the genesis hash as network ID, that would work.
Bit long, but suspect 64 bytes isn't the end of the world! I'll see if any
more responses come in then raise a BIP for using genesis hash as an
alternative to short names.

Ross

On 09/08/2015 15:29, Mike Hearn wrote:

I'd appreciate initial feedback on the idea, and if there's no major
> objections I'll raise this as a BIP.
>

The reason BIP 70 doesn't do this is the assumption that alt coins are ...
well .... alt. They can vary in arbitrary ways from Bitcoin, and so things
in BIP70 that work for Bitcoin may or may not work for other coins.

If your alt coin is close enough to BIP 70 that you can reuse it "as is"
then IMO we should just define a new network string for your alt. network =
"dogecoin-main" or whatever.

You could also use the genesis hash as the network name. That works too.
But it's less clear and would involve lookups to figure out what the
request is for, if you find such a request in the wild. I don't care much
either way.

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