Author: Matt Corallo 2021-04-07 00:46:16
Published on: 2021-04-07T00:46:16+00:00
The conversation in the bitcoin-dev mailing list seems to be missing an important aspect, which is the role of the market. The lesson learned from SegWit2x, BCH, BSV, BU, etc. is that ultimately, the market decides. There is money to be made by being the market maker or operator, and there is nothing we can do to ensure the market can make its voice heard as it always will. Instead of forcing individual users to form consensus through options or chain splits, we should let the market decide within reason.Rusty Russell argues that a regular flag day with no signaling but communally released and communicated openly would better achieve the goal of providing users choice. However, this ignores the role of infrastructure, which is similar to saying that there is no need for elections because citizens can rise up and overthrow their government if things are bad enough. There are four reasons why a fresh release may be simpler (and safer) than configurable LOT: no time-based consensus sensitivity on when LOT must be set, no "missed window" if users don't coordinate on setting LOT before the final period, ST fails fast permitting users ample time to prepare an alternative release, and miners continue to mine without signaling, and users abandon a LOT=true setting, their node will have already marked those blocks invalid and they will need to figure out how to re-validate the block.BIP-8 (with the recent modifications to allow maximal number of non-signaling blocks) is technically as fork-preventative as we can seek to make it. Rusty hopes that our ecosystem will remain harmonious and we won't have to use it, but he is significantly more hopeful that we won't have to use it if we have it deployed and ready.
Updated on: 2023-05-21T02:16:58.109359+00:00