When I purchase hardware with the intention of using it for anything to do with bitcoin/crypto, I will purchase hardware that could potentially be (and most often is) used by someone who is not using the hardware to handle bitcoin/crypto transactions. This reduces the risk of someone tampering with the hardware who is targeting someone who is a bitcoin user.
This is always on my mind too, but I couldn't know if some (Chinese) manufacturer tampered with all (millions of) devices they sell.
I
suggested upthread that blocks contain a hash of the UTXO set. This could potentially be done via a softfork
Why does this hash need to be included in the block? While you're downloading your pruned node, you could calculate this hash on your own. I see no reason to increase the size of the blockchain by a soft fork for this.
A node can obtain the actual UTXO set as of block x from a third party, calculate the hash of the UTXO set it was provided, and compare this to the hash contained in block x it receives from its peers. The node will also look at subsequent blocks to see how the UTXO set changed according to the blocks, calculate the hash, and validate accordingly. As long as the node is not being subjected to a Sybil attack, I would confidently say the node has sufficient information to know if a transaction is valid or not.
You've kinda lost me here: what can you do with this information that you can't currenly do (assuming a pruned node with full UTXO information)?
I don't think there are a lot of people in third-world countries spending $14/month on Netflix though.
Netflix charges
substantially lower fees in poorer countries.
The
average download speed is higher than I expected. Who still has bandwidth limits?
300 GB per month doesn't seem like much of a challenge even without downloading the full blockchain with multiple devices in the family.
And thanks to
Net neutrality, it's none of my ISP's business what I download.