Author: Chris Acheson 2017-04-14 10:52:46
Published on: 2017-04-14T10:52:46+00:00
The BIP148 agitators have proposed a UASF (User Activated Soft Fork) to activate the Segregated Witness (SegWit) protocol, which they believe will help Bitcoin's block size problem. The proposal is designed to ensure that all miners and nodes upgrade to SegWit before 1 August 2017. Under this proposal, if miners do not signal for SegWit support by 31 July 2017, their blocks will be orphaned by nodes that have implemented BIP148, creating a chain split. However, some argue that this approach is too disruptive for miners who don't upgrade to SegWit, resulting in a chain split on the flag day. On the other hand, there are proposals that avoid forced disruption by defining a new witness bit and allowing non-upgraded-to-uasf miners and nodes to continue as non-upgraded. This approach would be slower to deploy, but it does not pose such a flaw as the BIP148 proposal. BIP148 proponents believe that minimizing disruption for users must take priority over minimizing disruption for miners. If the orphaning approach is used, after the dust settles, 100% of the miners are guaranteed to have upgraded, assuming they didn't choose to forgo 2+ weeks of income. Any further chain splits would have to be the result of deliberate action by 51%+ of the mining power. If SegWit activates without orphaning the blocks of non-SegWit miners, then as soon as someone mines a SegWit-invalid transaction, the chain will split with upgraded nodes and miners on one side, and non-upgraded nodes and miners on the other side.While some people see the forced orphaning of 148 as punitive for misbehaving miners, punitive action against miners is not the point of BIP148; rather, it is an unavoidable side-effect of making the UASF less disruptive for the users of Bitcoin. However, some schadenfreude is bound to occur given the intensity of this dispute and the bad faith of certain actors.Finally, while Bitcoin is a system that should last for all ages and power mankind for a long time, continuing to wait has costs. The BIP148 proposal presents a window of opportunity, and it would be a waste not to act on it. In the event that we still lack sufficient support by July, we can abandon the project and make plans for how best to proceed from there.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T00:11:11.616437+00:00