Author: Billy Tetrud 2022-04-27 03:04:04
Published on: 2022-04-27T03:04:04+00:00
The Bitcoin community is currently debating a means of measuring user support for proposed soft-fork changes. Currently, activation mechanisms involve miner signaling in one form or another. However, this method is frustrating to many as it provides the only signal available to date, and "miner signaling" is consistently devalued as a signal for market demand. One proposed alternative is to create a mechanism whereby transactions themselves can signal for upgrade. Under this set of conditions, users would have a means of Sybil-resistant influence over miner decisions. This would give miners a better view into what users do want. However, there are concerns that such a mechanism may not be desirable. Holders wouldn't have much say as people who transact a lot or happen to be transacting during the signaling time period would have an unfair advantage over those who aren't transacting much. Additionally, the mechanism would bias the system towards things that are good for transactors and bad for holders. Bryan Bishop suggested an alternative way to do weighted polling of holders. The polling wouldn't be directly connected to the activation mechanism in any way but would just be a mechanism to gauge some portion of consensus.It's important to note that the economic majority controls where the chain goes, and the wealthy are likely disproportionately represented in that majority. Attempting to subvert the economic majority seems like a bad idea. Furthermore, adding an additional incentive to follow the money might distort the market. There are also concerns that the honest mechanics of such a mechanism might be undesirably distorting.The proposal involves mapping the free bits in the version field of a transaction to the signaling bits in the block header. A transaction signaling in the affirmative must not be included in a block that does not signal in the affirmative, and a transaction that is NOT signaling may be included in a block regardless of that block's signaling vector. The proposal raises some anticipated objections, including that signaling isn't voting, no deployment should be made without consensus first, and it gives CoinJoin pool operators and L2 protocol implementations power over deciding consensus.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T19:42:32.593287+00:00