On Sat, Dec 17, 2011, at 02:06 PM, Gavin Andresen wrote: > Although I do also wonder if we'll ever run into a problem with full > nodes refusing to answer requests from lightweight nodes (there might > be a tragedy-of-the-commons problem lurking there).
This seems likely. Also, even if many full nodes are willing to donate resources, there may simply be too few full nodes to handle the load. My preferred solution for handling scalability in the future is to have lightweight clients download only headers and Merkle trees (which are both small and easy to distribute), and then require senders to contact recipients directly in order to transmit their transactions. Then lightweight clients never need full blocks to build their balances, and full nodes don't have to handle expensive queries from lightweight clients. Under this scheme, the current broadcast system could be used among full nodes for a long time. Since clients wouldn't ever need to talk to full nodes, they could form a separate network with less reliable broadcasting and perhaps a fancier network architecture. Members of the full network would connect to the most reliable members of the client network in order to broadcast headers and Merkle trees and receive transactions. Full nodes would *not* answer any client queries, so dealing with the client network would not require many resources, and miners would probably have an incentive to do it. (Creating a "separate" network like this can be done by using the services field.) I don't think requiring senders to email some data to the recipient would be too burdensome, though it's probably also possible to design a system where even offline recipients can receive transactions through the Bitcoin network. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn Windows Azure Live! Tuesday, Dec 13, 2011 Microsoft is holding a special Learn Windows Azure training event for developers. It will provide a great way to learn Windows Azure and what it provides. You can attend the event by watching it streamed LIVE online. Learn more at http://p.sf.net/sfu/ms-windowsazure _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
