Author: Bryan Bishop 2022-04-26 20:39:44
Published on: 2022-04-26T20:39:44+00:00
Keagan McClelland, a Bitcoin developer, has proposed a new way to measure user support for proposed soft-fork changes in the cryptocurrency. In a post on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list, McClelland suggested that users should be able to pressure miners to act on their behalf by making transactions themselves signal for an upgrade. He believes there are "free" bits in the version field of a transaction that are presently ignored and could be used to create rules where a transaction signaling in the affirmative must not be included in a block that does not signal in the affirmative. Under this set of conditions, a user has the means of sybil-resistant influence over miner decisions.McClelland's proposal would allow miners to have a better view into what users want and could be an auxiliary feature of the soft fork deployment scheme chosen, making it something that could neatly package all together with the deployment itself. Some anticipated objections include that signaling isn't voting, no deployment should be made without consensus first, and that this is just a proposal for "pay to play", which would allow the wealthy to make consensus decisions. Other potential tweaks to the design were also discussed. McClelland asked the forum several questions, including whether the scheme would afford us a better view into consensus than we have today, if it can be gamed to give us a *worse* view into consensus, how it measures the right thing, and if he should write a BIP spec'ing this out in detail.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T19:42:11.839029+00:00