Author: Bryan Bishop 2016-02-06 17:34:02
Published on: 2016-02-06T17:34:02+00:00
In an email exchange on February 6, 2016, Gavin Andresen expressed skepticism about Bitcoin Core's segregated witness feature, stating that 28 days is not enough time to roll out new binaries and that a hard-fork may be necessary to increase capacity. In response, Bryan from Bitcoin Core defended the use of segregated witness, citing its voluntary, mutually backwards-compatible nature and the benefits it provides as outlined in this article. He also referenced the growing ecosystem buy-in and support for segregated witness, as well as a segwit testnet for developers to investigate and develop against. Bryan argued that the question should not be whether 28 days is enough time to roll out new binaries, but rather how long it takes for users to agree to upgrade to these new rules. He questioned why users would be more willing to upgrade when a certain percentage of hashpower sets a flag in a block, and suggested that a more data-driven approach and a rigorous planning process would be necessary for any hard-fork attempt. Bryan also provided links to various resources defining soft-forks, hard-forks, and generalized soft-forks, as well as articles discussing their security and potential impacts on the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T03:49:36.272237+00:00