reverify #13
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davecgh
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This commit removes the TxnCount field from the BlockHeader type and updates the tests accordingly. Note that this change does not affect the actual wire protocol encoding in any way. The reason the field has been removed is it really doesn't belong there even though the wire protocol wiki entry on the official bitcoin wiki implies it does. The implication is an artifact from the way the reference implementation serializes headers (MsgHeaders) messages. It includes the transaction count, which is naturally always 0 for headers, along with every header. However, in reality, a block header does not include the transaction count. This can be evidenced by looking at how a block hash is calculated. It is only up to and including the Nonce field (a total of 80 bytes). From an API standpoint, having the field as part of the BlockHeader type results in several odd cases. For example, the transaction count for MsgBlocks (the only place that actually has a real transaction count since MsgHeaders does not) is available by taking the len of the Transactions slice. As such, having the extra field in the BlockHeader is really a useless field that could potentially get out of sync and cause the encode to fail. Another example is related to deserializing a block header from the database in order to serve it in response to a getheaders (MsgGetheaders) request. If a block header is assumed to have the transaction count as a part of it, then derserializing a block header not only consumes more than the 80 bytes that actually comprise the header as stated above, but you then need to change the transaction count to 0 before sending the headers (MsgHeaders) message. So, not only are you reading and deserializing more bytes than needed, but worse, you generally have to make a copy of it so you can change the transaction count without busting cached headers. This is part 1 of btcsuite#13.
davecgh
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Jan 31, 2015
This closes btcsuite#13.
zhenyuzhao-cb
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Feb 20, 2023
Ltcutil/lastest
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an option to re verify the block database; computer crashes and other factors can potentially corrupt the block database in ways that are hard to detect other than re-verifying it. Upon a verify failure obviously it would need to download the corrupt data. Right now btcd trusts everything in the database is accurate and verified.
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