[Bitcoin-development] Service bits for pruned nodes

[Jeff Garzik]

On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 2:07 PM, John Dillon
<john.dillon892 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> After all Peter, just like you have implemented alternate block header
> distribution over twitter, in the future we should have many different means of
> peer discovery. Right now we have DNS seeds, a fixed list, and IRC discovery
> that does not work because the servers it was pointed too no longer exist. Not
> a good place to be.

Let's not confuse bootstrapping with overall peer discovery.

Peer exchange between P2P nodes is the primary and best method of
obtaining free peers.

Obviously you need to bootstrap into that, though.  DNS seed and fixed
list are those bootstrap methods (IRC code was deleted), but are only
used to limp along until you can contact a real P2P node, at which
point peer discovery truly begins.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik at exmulti.com