This disentangles the script validation skipping from checkpoints.
A new option is introduced "assumevalid" which specifies a block whos
ancestors we assume all have valid scriptsigs and so we do not check
them when they are also burried under the best header by two weeks
worth of work.
Unlike checkpoints this has no influence on consensus unless you set
it to a block with an invalid history. Because of this it can be
easily be updated without risk of influencing the network consensus.
This results in a massive IBD speedup.
This approach was independently recommended by Peter Todd and Luke-Jr
since POW based signature skipping (see PR#9180) does not have the
verifiable properties of a specific hash and may create bad incentives.
The downside is that, like checkpoints, the defaults bitrot and older
releases will sync slower. On the plus side users can provide their
own value here, and if they set it to something crazy all that will
happen is more time will be spend validating signatures.
Checkblocks and checklevel are also moved to the hidden debug options:
Especially now that checkblocks has a low default there is little need
to change these settings, and users frequently misunderstand them as
influencing security or IBD speed. By hiding them we offset the
space added by this new option.
This introduces a 'minimum chain work' chainparam which is intended
to be the known amount of work in the chain for the network at the
time of software release. If you don't have this much work, you're
not yet caught up.
This is used instead of the count of blocks test from checkpoints.
This criteria is trivial to keep updated as there is no element of
subjectivity, trust, or position dependence to it. It is also a more
reliable metric of sync status than a block count.
After discussion in #7164 I think this is better.
Max tip age was introduced in #5987 to make it possible to run
testnet-in-a-box. But associating this behavior with the testnet chain
is wrong conceptually, as it is not needed in normal usage.
Should aim to make testnet test the software as-is.
Replace it with a (debug) option `-maxtipage`, which can be
specified only in the specific case.
This switches the Merkle tree logic for blocks to one that runs in constant (small) space.
The old code is moved to tests, and a new test is added that for various combinations of
block sizes, transaction positions to compute a branch for, and mutations:
* Verifies that the old code and new code agree for the Merkle root.
* Verifies that the old code and new code agree for the Merkle branch.
* Verifies that the computed Merkle branch is valid.
* Verifies that mutations don't change the Merkle root.
* Verifies that mutations are correctly detected.
Andreas Schildbach