When RingCT is enabled, outputs from coinbase transactions
are created as a single output, and stored as RingCT output,
with a fake mask. Their amount is not hidden on the blockchain
itself, but they are then able to be used as fake inputs in
a RingCT ring. Since the output amounts are hidden, their
"dustiness" is not an obstacle anymore to mixing, and this
makes the coinbase transactions a lot smaller, as well as
helping the TXO set to grow more slowly.
Also add a new "Null" type of rct signature, which decreases
the size required when no signatures are to be stored, as
in a coinbase tx.
This allows them to be saved as a fixed (one byte) chunk whatever
the value. Using a varint will use two bytes as the high bit gets
set.
This is backward compatible with current usage (0-2 values).
Using major version would cause older daemons to reject those
blocks as they fail to deserialize blocks with a major version
which is not 1. There is no such restriction on the minor
version, so switching allows older daemons to coexist with
newer ones till the actual fork date, when most will hopefully
have updated already.
Also, for the same reason, we consider a vote for 0 to be a
vote for 1, since older daemons set minor version to 0.
Pros:
- smaller on the blockchain
- shorter integrated addresses
Cons:
- less sparseness
- less ability to embed actual information
The boolean argument to encrypt payment ids is now gone from the
RPC calls, since the decision is made based on the length of the
payment id passed.
Usage:
default is lmdb for blockchain branch:
$ make release
same as:
$ DATABASE=lmdb make release
for original in-memory implementation:
$ DATABASE=memory make release
