Luke-Jr [ARCHIVE] on Nostr: 📅 Original date posted:2012-07-22 📝 Original message:It just occurred to me ...

📅 Original date posted:2012-07-22
📝 Original message:It just occurred to me that the block version number could easily be used as a
cheap "extra nonce" right now. Considering that we will probably see lots of
ASIC miners running at 1 TH/s per rig before the end of 2012, it might be
desirable to save the block version for this purpose.

The current block height in coinbase addition currently proposes to use block
version 2. However, the protocol change is in fact to the coinbase
transaction, not the block itself (which really doesn't have any extensibility
without a hardfork anyway). Perhaps we should consider bumping the coinbase
transaction version number to 2 for this instead?

Also, Jeff noticed that block 190192 has version==2 without a valid block
height in the coinbase. I suspect this may be the result of combining the
current blockheight-in-coinbase pullreq with P2Pool. This means that if we go
forward with the version==2 marker, we will forever need to make an exception
for that block. Moving the version==2 to the coinbase transaction version also
means whoever makes that transaction (thus deciding whether to put the height
in it or not) also sets the version number - instead of the block version
coming from bitcoind and the coinbase transaction coming from P2Pool or other
software.

Thoughts?

Luke