Author: Michael Folkson 2020-08-29 10:14:50
Published on: 2020-08-29T10:14:50+00:00
The Bitcoin Core has announced an advanced stage of review for Signet PR 18267, and additional code review and testing is encouraged. There are meta questions surrounding Signets that need to be discussed outside of the Bitcoin Core repo, and it would be good to ensure everyone's testing needs are being met. The first question raised is whether there should be one "default" Signet for specific purposes or if multiple custom Signets should exist. The argument for a "default" Signet with a network effect is that it would provide a staging ground for testing proposed soft forks and prevent splintered Signet networks with different combinations of proposed soft forks enabled. There would have to be a formal understanding of at what stage a proposed soft fork should be enabled on the "default" Signet, and it would have to be at a sufficiently mature stage but early enough to test it on Signet well in advance of being considered for activation on mainnet. The second question raised is who should have keys to sign each new "default" Signet block assuming there is a "default" Signet. Currently, it is a 1-of-2 multisig with Kalle Alm and AJ Towns having keys, and it was suggested on IRC that there should be at least one additional key present in the EU/US timezone so blocks can continue to be mined during an Asia-Pacific outage. The third question raised is regarding concern from some in the community that testnet will somehow be replaced by Signet, which is not the case as long as someone out there is mining testnet blocks. However, there is the question of whether testnet needs to be reset since it was last reset in 2012. Assuming Signet is successful, there will be less testing on testnet, but what testing use cases will still prefer testnet? It has been argued that testnet should be a large chain to stress test certain IBD, P2P scenarios, and in that case, it may be the case that we don't want to reset testnet. If you have thoughts, feedback, or questions, it would be great to hear them. The closed issue on the Bitcoin Core repo is available for review, but discussion outside of the repo is encouraged.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T23:48:10.554562+00:00