> What you are suggesting, unless I am mistaken, is that new full nodes should 
> have no way of knowing if an output is spent or even if it exists. Since 
> large sections of the blockchain will potentially be skipped, the full node 
> will not have complete knowledge of utxo's just for starters.

So, this might not have been clear, but by "if we are given the liberty of 
modifying the protocol as we wish" I meant that I was discussing a protocol 
where these sorts of concerns are not an issue because we are not limited by 
the constraints of Bitcoin's current design.

There have been plenty of proposals across the web for how to design a 
blockchain where what you're referring to is not an issue because of merkle 
commitments, etc., and some blockchains already do this (e.g. I believe 
Ethereum does this via parity).

Cheers,
Greg

--
Please do not email me anything that you are not comfortable also sharing with 
the NSA.

> On Feb 19, 2018, at 4:04 AM, Damian Williamson <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> >1. Introducing state checkpoints into the chain itself could make it 
> >possible for full nodes to skip verification of large sections of historical 
> >data when booting up.
> 
> What you are suggesting, unless I am mistaken, is that new full nodes should 
> have no way of knowing if an output is spent or even if it exists. Since 
> large sections of the blockchain will potentially be skipped, the full node 
> will not have complete knowledge of utxo's just for starters.
> 
> Regards,
> Damian Williamson

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