delvingbitcoin

Great Consensus Cleanup Revival

Great Consensus Cleanup Revival

Original Postby ajtowns

Posted on: July 24, 2024 06:18 UTC

The discussion revolves around a proposed change in handling the coinbase witness value, suggesting it be fixed to a format that includes the block height (00000000height), thus preventing the addition of further commitments into this space.

However, this concept evolves into a more complex idea where instead of merely encoding the block height within the coinbase witness, there's a proposition to structure the coinbase's commitment as a merkle tree. Within this merkle tree framework, the left-most commitment would mandatorily represent the block height, but this specific approach diverges from the initial proposal mentioned.

Moreover, the underlying intention behind these technical deliberations is not to directly incorporate the block height into the coinbase witness. The goal is rather to ensure that every coinbase transaction includes a witness component. This requirement aims to introduce a unique element—an OP_RETURN output—in all future coinbase transactions. Such an inclusion would serve as a distinguishing feature, setting future coinbases apart from existing ones, which could potentially be duplicated without this specification.