Author: Keagan McClelland 2021-04-23 00:06:02
Published on: 2021-04-23T00:06:02+00:00
The email sent by Jeremy Rubin to the bitcoin-dev mailing list proposes a new upgrade mechanism for Bitcoin. The proposed mechanism includes a series of state transitions over a period of two years, with two soft forks and two quieting periods aimed at achieving consensus among miners and node operators. The emphasis is on avoiding lost hashrate, with forced signaling used to assuage concerns. The timeline for the process is laid out in detail, but questions remain regarding missing state transitions, adjustment of signaling thresholds, and parameter flexibility during quieting periods. The most contentious part of the proposal may be the PoW fork, which is included to emphasize the risk of committing to a minority chain due to rule activation with low hashrate.The letter is addressed to Jeremy and discusses the struggle to identify the complete set of problems that the process of organizing discussion around a repeatable process for soft-fork upgrades is attempting to solve. The writer argues against LOT=false deployment and the idea of miners having veto power over proposals.The proposal above is not seen as solving any meaningful progress on a consensus change process, particularly since it does not include a mechanism for gathering reliable information about user-preference in a sybil resistant way. The proposal aims to be compatible with Taproot's ST and is aimed at forming rough consensus around what to try next. The specific parameters are up for debate. Forced signaling is discussed, but its merit is unclear to the writer.The email concludes with a call for someone to write the software for the proposed mechanism.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T20:24:53.467110+00:00