Author: Gavin Andresen 2016-02-04 17:36:06
Published on: 2016-02-04T17:36:06+00:00
In a recent email, Gavin Andresen expressed his disagreement with the motivations behind a proposed Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP). Specifically, he questions items two and three of the proposal. The second item suggests that full nodes and Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) nodes may not be aware of the deployment of a hardfork, causing them to accept devalued legacy tokens. Andresen argues that if the version number is increased in blocks, as it is for soft forks, then there is no risk. He believes that full and SPV nodes should recognize that they are seeing up-version blocks and alert users of obsolete software regardless of whether it is due to a hard or soft fork. The third item in the proposal claims that users following the new chain may unexpectedly reorg back to the original chain if it grows faster than the new one. This can cause confirmed transactions to become unconfirmed, leading to monetary loss. However, Andresen argues that using a grace period, as described in BIP 9 or BIP 101, essentially eliminates this risk. He believes that a block-chain re-org of more than two thousand blocks on the main Bitcoin chain is unthinkable and would cause economic chaos, making it highly unlikely. Andresen does not agree with the motivations behind the BIP and thinks that the proposed mechanism, a negative-version-number-block, is unnecessary. He believes that adding more consensus-level code goes against the keep-it-simple principle.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T03:34:51.603340+00:00