Author: Tom Zander 2017-04-11 07:59:33
Published on: 2017-04-11T07:59:33+00:00
On April 7, 2017, Jimmy Song via bitcoin-dev proposed changing the version bits in the header of a block to a nonce-space so that miners could use it for overt ASICBoost. The current version bits are used for BIP9 signaling. This change would move the 32-bits over to the Coinbase transaction as part of the witness commitment, which would increase from 38 bytes to 42 bytes. The last 4 bytes would be used as the version bits in the block header previously. The witness commitment would become required as per Gregory Maxwell's proposal.However, the version field is still needed to allow future block version upgrades. If this were to be blocked, it would cut off the road forward for such upgrades. These proposals and changes have been discussed within the bitcoin community as part of ongoing efforts to improve the cryptocurrency.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T00:00:29.155490+00:00