[Bitcoin-development] Relative CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY (was CLTV proposal)

[Jorge Timón]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 1:35 PM, Jorge Timón <jtimon at jtimon.cc> wrote:
> There's another possibility that could keep the utxo out of Script verification:
>
> class CTxIn
> {
> public:
>     COutPoint prevout;
>     CScript scriptSig;
>     uint32_t nSequence;
> }
>
> could turn into:
>
> class CTxIn
> {
> public:
>     COutPoint prevout;
>     CScript scriptSig;
>     uint32_t nHeight;
> }
>
> And a new softfork rule could enforce that all new CTxIn set nHeight
> to the correct height in which its corresponding prevout got into the
> chain.
> That would remove the need for the TxOutputGetter param in
> bitcoinconsensus_verify_script, but unfortunately it is not reorg safe
> (apart from other ugly implementation details).

Wait, wait, this can be made reorg-safe and more backards compatible.
The new validation rule at the tx validation level (currently in
main::CheckInputs()) would be

for (unsigned int i = 0; i < tx.vin.size(); i++) {
// ...
            if (tx.vin.nHeight + 100 > tx.nLockTime)
                return state.Invalid(false, REJECT_INVALID,
"bad-txns-vin-height-reorg-unsafe");
            if (coins->nHeight > tx.vin.nHeight)
                return state.Invalid(false, REJECT_INVALID,
"bad-txns-vin-height-false");
// ...
}

Existing transactions that have used the deprecated CTxIn::nSequence
for something else will be fine if they've used low nSequences.
The only concern would be breaking some colored coins kernels, but
there's many others implemented that don't rely on CTxIn::nSequence.

Transactions that want to use OP_MATURITY just have to set the
corresponding CTxIn::nHeight and CTransaction::nLockTime properly.
This way op_maturity wouldn't require anything from the utxo and the
final interface could be:

 int bitcoinconsensus_verify_script(const unsigned char* scriptPubKey,
unsigned int scriptPubKeyLen,
                                        const unsigned char* txTo,
unsigned int txToLen,
                                        unsigned int nIn, unsigned int nHeight,
                                        unsigned int flags,
secp256k1_context_t* ctx,
                                        bitcoinconsensus_error* err);