From: Zac Mitton <zacmitton22@gmail.com>
To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [bitcoindev] Re: Fly Client Proposal
Date: Sat, 2 May 2026 12:23:41 -0700 (PDT) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <4cd9d2bd-28f8-47a5-95f5-a7c9ae222835n@googlegroups.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <69c7bb7f-5bf5-40f1-a2fd-a985ec88ddd7n@googlegroups.com>
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It makes sense that a STARK proof can do similar, however the 2 benefits to
this would be that (1) This doesnt require (any) more strict assumptions
which I'm assuming STARKS do, and (2) just the sheer simplicity of its
design. Sorry to bring up a touchy topic but is the STARK version quantum
safe, for instance? The flyclient version requires no new cryptographic
assumptions beyond the "honest mining majority" used currently.
Admittedly my dumb brain understands it better. I assume it would get
grouped into some larger softfork rollout...
On Friday, May 1, 2026 at 5:03:47 AM UTC-4 Nuh.dev wrote:
> FlyClient is very useful compared to SPV client, especially for
> blockchains with much more headers per day than Bitcoin. But fortunately,
> this is one of the few soft forks that we don't actually need, because we
> can substitute with a STARK proof as you can see here;
> https://github.com/starkware-bitcoin/raito ... so any energy for
> gathering consensus for a soft fork, before Bitcoin ossifies forever, is
> better spent elsewhere.
>
> On Thursday, 30 April 2026 at 21:55:05 UTC+3 Super Testnet wrote:
>
>> Seems pretty cool. It looks like it has similar trust assumptions as a
>> standard light client: the light client trusts the merkle root once it is
>> buried under several blocks of proof of work, believing that an attacker is
>> unlikely to do all that work just to fool a light client (especially when
>> they could have been actually mining bitcoin with all that hashrate). A
>> nice property is that, to get started, a fly client does not have to
>> download a variable number of block headers (namely, all of them, however
>> many there are), only a constant number of block headers, and it's a pretty
>> small total number. That property seems to make fly clients more efficient
>> than standard light clients.
>>
>> On Wednesday, April 29, 2026 at 5:03:36 PM UTC-4 Zac Mitton wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, Ive been looking into FlyClient first described here
>>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPNs9EVxWrA&t=8386s>. I don't see any
>>> BIPs, or previous discussion in this forum about it either.
>>>
>>> On bitcoin It could allow a light-client to verify the entire work of
>>> the heaviest chain with a single ~100KB proof.
>>>
>>> It can theoretically be done as a soft-fork by injecting a single hash
>>> into the coinbase tx (similar to how segwit is committed to).
>>>
>>> What do you guy's think?
>>>
>>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-05-02 20:07 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-04-29 21:00 [bitcoindev] Fly Client Proposal Zac Mitton
2026-04-30 18:52 ` [bitcoindev] " Super Testnet
2026-05-01 8:42 ` Nuh.dev
2026-05-02 19:23 ` Zac Mitton [this message]
2026-05-02 21:24 ` Nuh.dev
2026-05-03 16:56 ` Tom Harding
[not found] ` <CAOsDwYbfZXKe_dcNoL_t2DSrWokUXC2OJh33J8=CDHmO=n3AhA@mail.gmail.com>
2026-05-04 16:26 ` Tom Harding
2026-05-04 22:34 ` Zac Mitton
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