Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 15:09:25 -0400
From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>
To: Dave Scotese <dscotese@litmocracy.com>,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
Message-ID: <20190413190925.peux7djbopy5xu3t@petertodd.org>
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	<816FFA03-B4D9-4ECE-AF15-85ACBFA4BA8F@jonasschnelli.ch>
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Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] assumeutxo and UTXO snapshots
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On Wed, Apr 03, 2019 at 02:39:32PM -0700, Dave Scotese via bitcoin-dev wrot=
e:
> Every block's hash is smaller than the difficulty at that time.  Block
> 569927's hash was VERY small (started with 21 zeros).  The ratio of block
> hash to difficulty requirement (0xffffffff - difficulty, I think) could be
> used to identify blocks as "special," thus providing the opportunity to
> popularize unimportant but memorable-and-therefore-useful details.  How c=
an
> they be useful if they are unimportant?  They are useful for sanity
> checking.  For example, if the drunken bishop walk (or some other popular
> randomart) produced by block 569927's hash looked like a face, that would
> be memorable: "The block with the smallest hash in 2019 (maybe ever?) loo=
ks
> like a face after the drunken bishop walk."

As hashest smaller than the target have no significance to the Bitcoin
consensus I'd suggest not basing any features on that property. It's just as
arbitrary as picking whole decimal number block heights, yet has the additi=
onal
downsides of being harder to compute, and being likely to confuse people as=
 to
how the Bitcoin consensus works.

--=20
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org

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