This allows us to not have to update the chainparams whenever a
DNS Seed changes its filtering support, as well fixes a bug
introduced in 44407100f where returned nodes will never be
attempted.
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.
Wladimir J. van der Laan