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Bitcoin.org Developer Documentation
https://developer.bitcoin.org/
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Misleading comparison of blocks-first vs headers-first #119

Open rebroad opened 3 years ago

rebroad commented 3 years ago

The text currently says "The primary advantage of blocks-first IBD is its simplicity. The primary disadvantage is that the IBD node relies on a single sync node for all of its downloading."

This is misleading as the choice to download headers or blocks first is independent of the choice to download from a single peer or from multiple peers. It's just that the development happened to tackle both at the same time.

It's quite possible to do parallel blocks-first downloads, or single-peer headers-first downloads.

Whereas the actual advantages of headers-first are not mentioned here where it would seem to be the opportunity to do so.