3.6 KiB
NIP-xx
References to previous events
draft
optional
author:milahu
Events can contain references to previous events.
Implementation
Each reference to a previous events consists of
- the distance between this event and the previous event, as an integer number, greater-or-equal than 1
- the ID of the previous event
- optional: relay URL
The choice of distances is arbitrary. Some choices:
- exponentially increasing distances, for example: 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, ...
- linearly increasing distances, for example: 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, ...
- random distances, for example: 1, 15, 32, 58, 93, 139, 185, ...
{
"id": ...,
"kind": ...,
...,
...,
"e_prev": [
[<previous event distance>, <previous event ID>],
[<previous event distance>, <previous event ID>],
[<previous event distance>, <previous event ID>, <previous event relay URL>],
...
]
}
Soft chain of events
This is useful to build a "soft chain" of events, so the recipient can detect missing events.
Events can go missing because of
- political reasons (censorship)
- technical reasons (data loss)
Redundancy
Each event can contain multiple references to previous events.
The next-previous event (distance 1) SHOULD always be referenced.
The number of referenced previous events is arbitrary. It can be as low as one previous event, or as high as all previous events.
This gives a tolerance for missing events: When a previous event is missing, the recipient can seek back to another previous event.
Forward search for missing events
When an event is missing, and cannot be found on any other relay, the recipient will want to "seek forward" from another previous event.
Example:
The last received event E0
contains references to previous events [E1, E3, E7]
with the distances [1, 3, 7]
.
E1
is missing (cannot be found on any relay).
E3
is found and received.
Problem:
How can we find E2
?
We only know the distance 2
relative to E0
, but not the event ID of E2
.
Usually we would use the previous-event-reference with distance 1
relative to E1
, but we dont have E1
.
Solution:
We ask relays for events with references to E3
or E7
(or any other previous event in this chain).
So relays SHOULD implement a "lookup of events by reference-to-previous-events".
Limitations
Missing events can be detected only for past events, relative to a received event.
Adoption
Events created before the adoption of this NIP can be referenced in future events. To improve space-efficiency, it can make sense to distribute these back-references across multiple events ("sparse chains", "fragmented chains").
Inconsistencies
There is no guarantee that the merging of multiple previous-events-lists produces a consistent chain of events. Eventual inconsistencies can be resolved by sorting events by time or event ID. (Multiple diverging chains can be merged by sorting events by time or event ID.)
Such inconsistencies allow modification of the chain (insertion or deletion of previous events), so the chain is mutable.
Visualization
Clients should visualize:
- the reference to the first previous event
- missing previous events
If there are many missing previous events, these can be collapsed to a "N missing events" block.
TODO: rename key
{
...,
"e_prev": [
...
]
}
Rename the key to ...
- previous_events
- e_prev
- prevs
- history
- soft_chain
- chain
Keywords
- blockchain
- censorship-resistance
- tamper-proof
- append-only