Hashed Block Payloads

[lastmjs]

Further context can be found in the following comments, we will continue the discussion in this thread:

Let's solve these crucial protocol weaknesses

The data that made it onto the replicas via these side-channels would still be technically part of the block. A block with only a hash and no actual data would be more or less useless. So for the purposes of gossiping the block around and achieving consensus, the block would still have a 4 MB limit. But for the upper layers (or if you wanted to back up and preserve the full blockchain) you would have to include these additional pieces of content. The reason why there’s a relatively minuscule l…

Let's solve these crucial protocol weaknesses

Maybe, to some extent. But keep in mind that computation would still need to be deterministic. So it would still likely imply Wasm code compiled against the IC’s system API, rather than arbitrary code. Or you could easily run the risk of running some computation for hours on end across all replicas on a subnet only to find out that they disagree (which I understand is a common issue with e.g. HTTP outcalls). So IMHO this is definitely not a silver bullet. Furthermore, this is a half-baked id…