[new feature discussion] -fastboot

[regis]

Of course it is. That's not what I meant. What you are doing is useful, but it does not have the same security guarantees. Right now, through hardcoded block hashes in the client, the maintainer has the ability to force a particular chain onto you, but that chain must still exist and be valid. If the hash of the entire block file is hardcoded in the client, the maintainer can effectively make you get an invalid block database.

sure, but then - even if evil maintainer prepared faked blockchain - client shouldn't download more blocks from p2p. correct?

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[casascius]

Of course it is. That's not what I meant. What you are doing is useful, but it does not have the same security guarantees. Right now, through hardcoded block hashes in the client, the maintainer has the ability to force a particular chain onto you, but that chain must still exist and be valid. If the hash of the entire block file is hardcoded in the client, the maintainer can effectively make you get an invalid block database.

If there is an evil maintainer and I am running his code, there are many more nefarious things he could be doing with my computer that will be harder for me to notice than giving me an invalid block database that I will probably quickly notice (or hear about in the forums).  It's a risk I'm probably willing to take so I don't have to wait a day to start using the software.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

The general idea is very very good, but the current "snapshots" of the network should be put on torrent sites.

Torrents offer many advantages over normal ways of distribution:

- Automatic checking of authenticity (torrents have checksums integrated)
- Greatest speed of download
- Decentralization: no central servers needed (same as with Bitcoin)

[regis]

The general idea is very very good, but the current "snapshots" of the network should be put on torrent sites.

Torrents offer many advantages over normal ways of distribution:

- Automatic checking of authenticity (torrents have checksums integrated)
- Greatest speed of download
- Decentralization: no central servers needed (same as with Bitcoin)

I very like the idea of using Bittorrent, but I'm not sure about few things:

1. we're adding big dependency on other program (bittorrent client)
2. I don't know any good and portable  C / C++  lib for bittorrent (any ideas?)
3. it's still centralised (bittorrent clients need to connect to tracker), but of course it's much better in terms of download speed and load balancing.
4. Bitcoin clients are already using some protocol to download blocks - perhaps we can resuse it instead of adding another protocol?

All in all: idea looks good, but I wasn't not sure how to deal with those problem, so I just implemented version with mirrors. If we find a solution, I'll try to improve fastboot ;-)