Kernel and What it Can Do

Date

5 May, 2026

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Public interface was merged 8ish months ago
- People have started to use it, although the interface can and will break
Design goal is to minimize differences in public interface code
Floresta is using kernel, which is a utreexo light client
- Great for mobile wallets
- Using script interpreter
- Cannot use all of the current functionality
Work to add functions that do not require UTXO context
- Block validation is one such example
Other users
- SwiftSync PoC
- SwiftSync hintsfile generation
- kernel-node Rust full-node
Current interface is very high level and cannot be called intermediate states (ProcessBlock)
- CheckBlock is one of the first internals is that is exposed from block validation
Defining the scope of the kernel
- Chainstate is apart of the kernel, but should it move out, i.e. should the kernel be pure validation
- Ergonomics of the C API can be difficult to use
  - Returning pointers to types can raise questions as to who cleans up the pointer
- API must get to a point where kernel can be used internally
How safe is the interface in a multi-threaded context
Is there a multi-threaded fuzzer to check races
- Probably not
Back to the theme, what can you do?
- Build your own node
- Read data
- Research
- Limitations
  - Cannot be run in parallel to Bitcoin Core