[hashcash] Re: comment on reducing padding (Re: Re: libfastmint update 20040915)

  • From: "Eric S. Johansson" <esj@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: hashcash@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 07:19:08 -0400

Justin Guyett wrote: 

Why should they have a hashcash binary?  Any embedded system without a
compiler then has to be supplied with a hashcash binary by whatever
entity compiles the rest of the system.

yes. That's normally how these things work. We are providing a standard library or command line tool to generate the hashcash stamp. If you want to use the services, you need to have the library. Same argument could be had for TCP stacks, memory management, math functions, or configuration file access.

Knowledge of and modification to the stamp format should not be required
at all in order to measure the raw (version 0 style) value of the stamp.


but the version 0 style is deprecated as far as I know.


Is there a good reason to standardize padding in the last field?  Why
not let the generator do whatever it wants, including omitting the
counter field entirely?

I think it's a bad idea to force people to use unnecessarily complex
implementations.

the complexity comes from the need for speed. If we can gain a significant performance improvement with padding, then we should take advantage of that because if we don't, spammers will.

---eric



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