Author: Eric Voskuil 2015-08-20 00:08:30
Published on: 2015-08-20T00:08:30+00:00
In an email exchange from August 2015, Jorge Timón and Eric Voskuil discussed the separation of consensus code from commit policies in Bitcoin Core. Timón suggested that once libconsensus was complete, it could be moved to a separate repository, which Voskuil agreed with, but noted that as long as libconsensus is built directly from the bitcoind repository, he did not consider Bitcoin Core just another implementation. Voskuil asked how other implementations would transition off of the Bitcoin Core repository and commit policies, or if they expected the dependency to be perpetual. Timón explained that at first, libconsensus would need to be a subtree/subrepository of Bitcoin Core, but this would not be a problem for alternative implementations. Voskuil expressed concern about stakeholders maintaining consensus when their individual intent diverged and asked how this could be managed with a direct dependency on libconsensus. Timón suggested forking the libconsensus project and doing the schism/controversial/contentious hardfork there. Voskuil argued that this was a false dichotomy and that embracing an independent consensus repository would be much safer. He also noted that there were only a small number of implementations that relied on consensus. Timón admitted to only having contacted libbitcoin and said that attempts to get feedback from other alternative implementations had been mostly ignored threads in bitcoin-dev.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T19:55:26.426787+00:00