Author: Greg Sanders 2017-04-15 13:54:57
Published on: 2017-04-15T13:54:57+00:00
The writer, Natanael, does not believe that User Activated Soft Fork (UASF) is a good choice for activating soft forks in Bitcoin. The only two reliable signals for this purpose in Bitcoin are block height (flag day) and standard miner signaling, as every other metric can be falsified or gamed. Enforcement by orphaning non-compliance makes it harder to reverse a buggy softfork, since it increases the effort needed to return enough mining power to the safe chain. There's also the risk of the activation itself triggering consensus bugs (multiple incompatible UASF forks), if there's multiple implementations of it in the network. Additionally, there is no way for a node to tell another "the transaction you just relayed to me is invalid according to an active softfork" (or "will become invalid"). This matters for several reasons, including widespread usage of zero-confirmation payments in the network. A flag day or similar is more effective because it cannot be ignored unlike "just another one of those UASF proposals" that might not have been evaluated or expected to activate. It is recommended that all nodes and services should publish all consensus critical policies that they enforce, making it easier to alert somebody that they need to prepare for whatever proposal might conflict with their active policies.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T00:10:14.400837+00:00