Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] [BIP Proposal] New "sendheaders" p2p message

From: Tier Nolan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2015 19:17:50 +0100

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 7:02 PM, Suhas Daftuar via bitcoin-dev <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm proposing the addition of a new, optional p2p message to help improve
> the way blocks are announced on the network.  The draft BIP is available
> here and pasted below:
> https://gist.github.com/sdaftuar/465bf008f0a4768c0def
>
> The goal of this p2p message is to facilitate nodes being able to
> optionally announce blocks with headers messages rather than with inv's,
> which is particularly beneficial since the introduction of headers-first
> download in Bitcoin Core 0.10.  In particular, this allows for more
> efficient propagation of reorgs as it would eliminate a round trip in
> network communication.
>

Is there actually a requirement for the new message?  New nodes could just
unilaterally switch to sending headers and current nodes would be
compatible.

It looks like the only DOS misbehaving penalty is if the header is invalid
or if the headers don't form a chain.