Remove the pnext pointer in CBlockIndex, and replace it with a
vBlockIndexByHeight vector (no effect on memory usage). pnext can
now be replaced by vBlockIndexByHeight[nHeight+1], but
FindBlockByHeight becomes constant-time.
This also means the entire mapBlockIndex structure and the block
index entries in it become purely blocktree-related data, and
independent from the currently active chain, potentially allowing
them to be protected by separate mutexes in the future.
Every block index entry currently requires a separately-allocated
CBigNum. By replacing them with uint256, it's just 32 bytes extra
in CBlockIndex itself.
This should save us a few megabytes in RAM, and less allocation
overhead.
Pieter Wuille