Hello guys,

I have been reading about transactions recently and I am interested in understanding how the size of a transaction is influenced by its building elements.
So for example we know that a transaction contains:

• a certain number of inputs
• a cetrain number of outputs
• a locking scrpit (scriptPubKey)
• an unlocking script (scriptSig)

... and other elements. What I would like to know is how much each of the elements contributes to the total size of the transaction. So for example how many bytes are the typical scripts? Do they vary in size? Do inputs have a (approximately) fixed size in bytes? Do outputs have a (approximately) fixed size in bytes? Is everything thus a simple game of addition?

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my question!

Hello guys,

I am currently reading Mastering Bitcoin and as the author suggests, for a more in-depth understanding it is advisable to run a Full node and execute commands in the command line. So my question is, is there any way to get the benefit of learning without having a full copy of the Blockchain locally. Perhaps there are some alternative clients, that could allow me to achieve that? I am aware that there is a testnet, could that be a solution to my 'problem'?

I don't have the bandwidth to remain connected all the time, this is my primary reason for looking for a workaround. You can imagine that syncing once and then disconnecting is simply stupid.

Hello,

I am curious how the Bitcoin network handles alternative clients to Bitcoin Core? My question is how are they compatible with the rest of the network? Is there a practice among larger participants, like mining pools for instance to use alternative implementations for their own means? How do we know that an alternative implementation is not malicious? All in all I could summarize the question as: Are alternative clients a security threat? But please elaborate on any of my previous questions if you wish so.

Also would anyone be able to recommend a good read on how mining pools work. In particular I am curious how they share the workload towards the same objective, which is to find a hash bellow the threshold. I suppose they should have a way to communicate what combination of bits they have tried out to find the nonce, so others can move forward.