Author: Jorge Timón 2016-02-03 00:59:58
Published on: 2016-02-03T00:59:58+00:00
The discussion revolves around different types of consensus and the need to distinguish between them. BIP99 requires two concepts: "consensus rules" and "adoption consensus". The former refers to the id of a theoretical communication channel, while the latter pertains to how users coordinate to upgrade to a new channel. In this regard, BIP99 aims to establish safe deployment requirements for an uncontroversial hardfork, similar to those for softforks. However, the concept of "adoption consensus" needs a neutral term that doesn't favor softfork or hardfork changes. The proposal aims to clarify the meaning of "consensus" in four contexts: (1) consensus among developers for changes in the BIP process; (2) economic consensus to veto a soft-fork by firing the set of miners; (3) actual consensus in economic adoption of changed rules; and (4) the set of rules currently established as defining Bitcoin, enforced by an actual consensus of economically-relevant nodes. While context 3 can be disambiguated with "adoption consensus," context 4 is referred to as "consensus rules" or "consensus protocol." However, sharing the word "consensus" for all four contexts may still be confusing. Thus, suggestions are welcome to make this completely clear.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T03:30:36.909983+00:00