[Bitcoin-development] New standard transaction types: time to schedule a blockchain split?

[Pieter Wuille]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 02:31:49PM -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Perhaps just an address type that can encode any payment script?  User
> provides the inputs, sets the outputs plus and additional outputs, and
> signs. Client refuses to pay to an address if the resulting
> transaction fails IsStandard.

On the github pull request I posted a general scheme that can convert arbitrary
expressions over signature-checks (given in RPL notation) to bitcoin scripts.
Maybe we can define an address type that encodes an expression in RPL form (which
should be more compact and more easily parseable)?

That basically just means the usual bitcoin scripts, with two extra pseudo-
instructions: one that represents an address check, one that represents an
pubkey check.

For example (same example as on the pull req), the expression
a1 OR (a2 AND a3) OR COUNT(a4,a5,a6)>1 (with a1-a6 given addresses)
can be given in RPL form as

  ADDR<a1> ADDR<a2> ADDR<a3> BOOLAND BOOLOR ADDR<a4> ADDR<a5>
  ADD ADDR<a6> ADD 1 GREATERTHAN BOOLOR

Which is 13 bytes + 6*20 bytes, instead of the 54 bytes + 6*20 bytes for the
real bitcoin output script.


-- 
Pieter