Author: Matt Bell 2017-04-27 17:48:16
Published on: 2017-04-27T17:48:16+00:00
A possible way to activate Segwit sooner is to bribe the miners. A trustless contract protocol has been proposed where contributors could pledge to a Segwit bounty which would be paid out to miners if Segwit is activated, else the funds are returned to the contributor. The contributor picks a possible future height where Segwit may be activated and when the funds should be released, chooses a bounty contribution amount and generates 3 private keys (k1, k2, and k3) and corresponding pubkeys (K1, K2, and K3). The contributor creates and broadcasts the Funding Transaction, which has 2 outputs and builds the Segwit Assertion Transaction. The contributor also builds the Bounty Payout Transaction and publishes both these transactions (with signatures) somewhere where miners can find them. Miners can find Funding Transactions confirmed on the chain and verify the other 2 transactions are correct and have valid signatures. Once the chain reaches height H-1, if Segwit has activated, miners can claim the bounty payout by including the Segwit Assertion and Bounty Payout transactions in their block H. If Segwit has not activated at height H, Input 1 of the Bounty Payout is not valid since it spends a P2WPKH output, preventing the miner from including the Bounty Payout transaction in the block. The contributor can reclaim the funds from Output 0 of the Funding tx by creating a new transaction, signed with k1. This is likely a win-win scenario for the contributors, since Segwit activating will likely increase the price of Bitcoin, which gives a positive return if the price increases enough. If it does not activate, the funds will be returned so nothing is at risk.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T00:34:21.055587+00:00