Quote from: bluemeanie1 on June 17, 2013, 05:33:02 PM

Do you understand that checkpoints completely violate the entire purpose of Bitcoin?

I understand that they violate some purpose of bitcoin.
But I am also a pragmatic person and so I prefer to have a system that violates some very unlikely to happen purposes, as long as it is a way to keep my resources away from spammers.

Quote from: bluemeanie1 on June 17, 2013, 05:33:02 PM

What they do is introduce a form of approval(consensus) about the state of a chain. This form of authority could certainly be abused, and it runs counter to practically every design principle of Bitcoin.

But your concerns are 100% theoretical and it isn't really possible to start a fork like 2000 blocks back and get with it to the top.
And even if it was possible, would you really want it? Because I would not.

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at the most fundamental level, the client code should not have ANYTHING to say about the block chain. Whether this is required in order to operate is irrelevant. The reason people use Bitcoin is *because* it's peer-to-peer.

Again: the node, and the network, must protect itself from DoS attacks.
What are you even trying to achieve forbidding people doing this?

If you one day manage to create a branch that would beat their chosen checkpoint - then I will agree with you.
But so far, I don't get your problem, though I appreciate your innocent ideas.