Author: Eric Voskuil 2018-02-14 23:57:10
Published on: 2018-02-14T23:57:10+00:00
In a discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Marco Falke defined a "buried deployment" as a consensus rule change that affects the validity of blocks buried by a sufficiently large number of blocks in the current valid most-work chain. However, there are concerns about the definition given that it would imply there is no need to validate any block deeper than the most recent 25,000. The issue with this assumption is that it presumes that people may continuously rely on some authority, such as Bitcoin Core, to determine the checkpoint for tip-25,000, which may not be the case. Falke also suggests that the differentiation between soft forks and hard forks should not be made for buried deployments because they do not require community and miner coordination for a safe deployment, but this is only true if the hard fork cannot result in a chain split. It is important to note that a buried deployment is a subjective subcategory of a hard fork, not an independent category unless an objective threshold can be established. In addition, it is untrue that the security assumptions of Bitcoin preclude deep reorganizations, even in the unlikely event of a massive chain reorganization due to a buried deployment.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T00:44:12.436554+00:00