You have created a straw man. And light clients working against the P2P network (anonymous nodes) implies they are not fully validating, so you are contradicting yourself.
e > On Aug 29, 2018, at 11:27, Jonas Schnelli <d...@jonasschnelli.ch> wrote: > > >> The API implementation is not what is centralizing, nor is full indexation >> non-scalable. The centralization is in not running the API from a node under >> your own control. This is of course implied by the comment, “without the >> need for syncing”. In other words it is the deployment cost of the node that >> is centralizing. > > IMO an API that serves non verifiable data is supporting centralised > validation. The „API" which supports one of the most important properties in > Bitcoin – the ability to self-validate – is the data available via the p2p > network. > >> >> Yet if people relied only on bitcoind and never centralized services there >> would be *no* block explorers (and no secure light wallets), because it does >> not provide remote query and does not fully index. >> >> Block explorers and light wallets are pretty useful, so presumably some API >> must provide these features (ideally with reduced deployment cost). That >> will either be centralized or decentralized services. As such it seems wise >> to encourage the latter, as opposed to questioning whether there is any >> valid block explorer use case. > > Bitcoin-Core has all required features to partially „index“ data (called the > wallet) and provides them via the RPC API. If you don’t need to serve > thousands of wallets (which smells after centralised validation), selective > indexing (wallets) are the right choice. Also, if you have a proper light > client architecture, you can use Bitcoin Core in pruned mode (<10GB of data) > to serve an endless amount of wallets (client/server mode, I guess that is > what you are referring to with "light clients"). > > I fail to see the use-cases where a fully index blockchain makes sense (the > only one I can come up with is instant backup recovery where the transaction > history needs to be preserved rather then recovering the UTXOs only). > > Also, the p2p protocol has built in light client support with BIP37 (bloom > filters) and soon BIP158 will be available on the network which does allow > privacy-preserving "light clients" in a way where no trusted layer is > required (client <-> p2p network rather then client <-> API provider <-> p2p > network). > > I don’t want to advocate against a full-index blockexplorer-like API. I just > think its important to define the use case and be aware of the consequences > and downsides. > > /jonas _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
