Author: Samson Mow 2017-04-01 03:03:03
Published on: 2017-04-01T03:03:03+00:00
A proposal called Segwit2Mb has been introduced as a solution to the deadlock in the Bitcoin community over scaling. The proposal combines segwit with a 2MB block size hard-fork that is only activated if segwit is activated by 95% of miners signaling, but at a fixed future date. The goal is to reunite the Bitcoin community and avoid a cryptocurrency split. However, it is not the best possible technical solution to solve Bitcoin technical limitations.The tentative lock-in and hard-fork dates are April 29th, 2017, to August 29th, respectively, with a conditional requirement of 95% of hashing power approving the segwit2mb soft-fork and the segwit soft-fork being activated (which should occur 2016 blocks after its lock-in time). Once segwit is activated, the hard-fork is unavoidable. While the proposal has been coded, the source code will not be published until more comments from the community have been received.There is no benefit to be gained from a 2MB hard-fork at this time, and it would impose an unnecessary cost to the ecosystem for testing and implementation. Suggestions were made, including utilizing the "hard fork signaling bit" in the nVersion of the block, limiting non-SegWit transactions in some way to fix the n^2 sighash and FindAndDelete runtime and memory usage issues, adding replay protection, tweaking the witness discount, and providing additional commitments at the top of the merkle root. The effect of technological innovations coming down the pipe in the coming months, such as Lightning, TumbleBit, and RootStock, should also be considered. Sergio Demian Lerner has proposed a hard fork called segwit2Mb, which he believes will take less time to upgrade than previous updates given current operational problems. He suggests delaying the hard-fork date if necessary. Delaying a compromise solution would halt innovation in the community for several years, which most agree is not an ideal outcome.If segwit2mb locks-in before the hard-fork occurs, all bitcoin nodes should be updated to a Segwit2Mb enabled node to prevent them from being forked-away in a chain with almost no hashing-power. Lightweight (SPV) wallets are unlikely to be affected as they generally do not check the block size. The patch was made for Bitcoin Core but should be easily ported to other Bitcoin protocol implementations that already support versionbits.Contributions to the segwit2mb project are welcomed and awaited, the only limitation is that the patch should be simple to audit. Improvements unrelated to a 2 Mb increase or segwit should not be part of segwit2Mb. This proposal should not prevent other consensus proposals to be simultaneously merged: segwit2mb is a last resort solution in case the community cannot reach consensus on anything better. The proposal is only a starting point and community feedback is expected and welcomed.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T23:16:46.350149+00:00