Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposal: remove "getwork" RPC from bitcoind

From: Pieter Wuille <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 22:14:36 +0200

On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Frank F <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I strongly object to removing the only mechanism that allows anyone to say
> that bitcoin is p2p, in the truest sense of the word. Moves like this that
> favor only the pool operators and private mining interests are signs that
> bitcoin is headed towards a monopoly/cartel model, and that would be a
> tragic outcome for something that holds a great promise. Nobody knows what
> mining will look like in the future, and denying the individual novice the
> ability to mine at a small scale, even if we may think it is inefficient
> now, is not a good path to start down.
>
> If there are technical problems with getwork, maybe they should be addressed
> and fixed instead of outright abandoned.

They were addressed and fixed in a successor API, getblocktemplate.
It's even more decentralization-friendly, as it allows the caller to
see what transactions the daemon is trying to put into a block, and
even modify it.

The suggestion here is not to remove functionality - only to remove an
obsolete API for doing so.

-- 
Pieter