Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Segwit details? SEGWIT WASTES PRECIOUS BLOCKCHAIN SPACE PERMANENTLY
by
kn_b_y
on 17/03/2016, 21:13:29 UTC
A strong malleability fix _requires_ segregation of signatures.

No, none of the alleged benefits of SegWit requires segregation of signatures:

* Malleability could be fixed by just skipping the signatures (the same data that SegWit would segregate) when computing the txid.  

* GREATER bandwidth savings could be obtained by providing API/RPC calls that simple clients can use to fetch the data that they need from full nodes, sans the signatures etc.  This enhancement would not even be a soft fork, and would let simple clients save bandwidth even when fetching legacy (non-SegWit) blocks and transactions.  

* Pruning signature data from old transactions can be done the same way.

* Increasing the network capacity can be achieved by increasing the block size limit, of course.

(Thanks for answering this one question about malleability fix I had. So it can simply be done by omitting sigs from the txid hash input, cool. If not, please let me know)

It seems to me many people have a problem with segwit because of the "hackish" softfork and/or because of the change of the economic model (2 classes of blockspace).

If we did the points listed by JorgeStolfi above as a hardfork, would that be an option for the proponents of segwit? Seems to me such a hardfork could gain wide consensus, maybe wide enough to be considered safe by everyone? It would certainly appeal to the people who just want a simple blocksize increase and it should (I don't know, though) also satisfy the people who want segwit now.

What would be missing compared to segwit? fraud proofs? change of economic model?


Maybe you should read gmaxwell's posts about doing a hard fork to change that calculation. They are a few posts above this in this thread.
Yes. Well said.

It's unsettling how often information that has already been provided is left ignored or unreferenced.

More excusable for the one-off contributors, I realise, but not for those whose apparent strong interest in the issues lead them to post again and again.

Sometimes it's been like wading through treacle, but I'm glad Gregory Maxwell contributed (don't know anything about bitcoin developers, and had never heard of him until today) and what he wrote about the different methods of fixing transaction malleabilty, and their implications, particularly made an impression.

I'd recommend reading his posts in full. Advisory notice - he does lose his patiance occassionally! And for balance, read those he references and those who reference him. And if that prevents just one unecessary post, I'll have done my