[Bitcoin-development] 32 vs 64-bit timestamp fields

[Mike Hearn]

2038 issues only apply to use of signed timestamps, I thought we treat
this field as unsigned? Is it really a big deal?

On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 08, 2013 at 10:42:44PM -0400, Peter Todd wrote:
>> Ah, shoot, I just realized we both got missed Pieter's point entirely:
>> he means to change the meaning of the header timestamp to be relative
>> time passed since the last block...
>
> No, though that's also a possibility, but a backward-incompatible one.
>
> What I mean is have a well-defined 64-bit timestamp for each block, but
> only put the lowest 32 bit in the header. Under the condition:
>
> * There is never a gap of more than 136 years between two blocks.
>
> The actual 64-bit timestamp can be deterministically derived from the
> header, by prefixing it with the lowest 32-bit value that does not
> cause the result to violate the
> at-least-above-the-median-of-the-previous-11-blocks rule.
>
> --
> Pieter
>
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