On Sat, May 9, 2015 at 1:45 PM, Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org> wrote:

On Sat, May 09, 2015 at 12:09:32PM -0500, Jim Phillips wrote:
> The vast majority of users are running one of a handful of different wallet
> apps: Core, Electrum; Armory; Mycelium; Breadwallet; Coinbase; Circle;
> Blockchain.info; and maybe a few others. The developers of all these
> wallets have a vested interest in the continued usefulness of Bitcoin, and
> so should not be opposed to changing their UTXO selection algorithms to one
> that reduces the UTXO database instead of growing it.

You can't assume that UTXO growth will be driven by walles at all; the
UTXO set's global consensus functionality is incredibly useful and will
certainly be used by all manner of applications, many having nothing to
do with Bitcoin.

You're correct in this point. Future UTXO growth will be coming from all directions. But I'm a believer in the idea that whatever can be done should be done. If we get Bitcoin devs into the mindset now that UTXOs are expensive to those that have to store them, and that they should be good netizens and do what they can to limit them, then hopefully that will ideal will be passed down to future developers. I don't believe consolidating UTXOs in the wallet is the only solution.. I just think it is a fairly easy one to implement, and can only help the problem from getting worse in the future.

James G. Phillips IV

"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals." -- David Ogilvy

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