Bitcoin Cash Specification

Announcement: Inventory (“inv”)

Notifies peers about the existence of some information (block or transaction).

Based on selected services in the version message, inventory messages may not be sent.

If a bloom filter has been sent to this node via filterload, a transaction inventory will only be sent for transactions that match the bloom filter.

Message Format

Field Length Format Description
inventory count variable variable length integer The number of inventory items in this message.
inventory items inventory_count * 36 bytes inventory_count inventory items The set of inventory items being transmitted. Up to 50,000 inventory items can be sent in a single inventory message.

NOTE: Since a block header is a relatively small data structure, and block propagation speed is an important network metric, a peer may send headers messages in place of inventory messages when a block arrives. This behavior can be requested using the sendheaders message.

Inventory Item Format

Field Length Format Description
type 4 bytes inventory type(LE) Indicates what the following hash represents.
item hash 32 bytes bytes(LE) The hash that identifies the item.

Inventory Types

The type of the object that is available.

Type Value
0x0001 Transaction
0x0002 Block
0x0003 Filtered Block (partial block with merkle proof)
0x0004 Compact block
0x0005 Xthin block (Bitcoin Unlimited)
0x0006 Graphene Block (Bitcoin Unlimited)
0x94A0 Double Spend Proof - Beta