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Messages on the Bitcoin network are identified by the magic value 0xD9B4BEF9, and on the testnet by 0xDAB5BFFA. Why were these values chosen?
How was the magic network ID value chosen?
Answers
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main.cpp carries this comment:
// The message start string is designed to be unlikely to occur in normal data.
// The characters are rarely used upper ascii, not valid as UTF-8, and produce
// a large 4-byte int at any alignment.
unsigned char pchMessageStart[4] = { 0xf9, 0xbe, 0xb4, 0xd9 };
I find the rational of the code comment interesting. I believe that unless you stream the blocks the probability of these bytes occurring in normal data is irrelevant. Since bitcoin communicates with TCP it doesn't make sense. Can anyone shed more light to this? – karask – 2016-03-05T09:46:27.460
@karask It could mean that Bitcoin itself was designed by a large corporation or government (someone with the means to watch packets going over the network in bulk.) That's the only context it likely gets streamed anyway. – CoryG – 2017-12-12T05:46:08.307
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It was chosen because it is a prime number, and also because 4190024921 is the hypotenuse of a primitive Pythagorean triple: 4190024921^2 = 2924728880^2 + 3000378279^2
Edit: Note that you must consider byte order. The TCP protocol requires the number to be encoded in big-endian. 0xf9beb4d9 (little) = 0xd9b4bef9 (big)
See https://stackoverflow.com/a/13514942 for more info about that.
2How do you know that it was chosen for that reason? – Nick ODell – 2017-03-30T22:37:12.320
1 @NickODell He knows because he is either Satoshi, or a savant. Otherwise he simply pasted the number into WA https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4190024921 I'll let you decide the likeliest scenario. – DenisM – 2018-05-08T19:11:29.883
1@DenisM ;) Satoshi was into numbers, so I was pretty sure it had some interesting property to it, and indeed, WA to the rescue. :) – Richard Anthony Hein – 2018-05-15T01:05:59.223
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Also check this answer.
– karask – 2016-03-04T21:09:41.103