Author: Michael Folkson 2021-02-18 11:01:29
Published on: 2021-02-18T11:01:29+00:00
Recently, there have been discussions on whether LOT (lockinontimeout) should be set to true or false for Taproot activation. Michael Folkson, a Bitcoin Core contributor, held a meeting on IRC to explore the arguments for both sides in depth. Despite being open to all, only 100 people attended, so it is hardly representative of the entire community. After the meeting, consensus was reached on most details except LOT. There was more strong opposition from Bitcoin Core contributors, Lightning developers, and other community members against LOT=true than there was for LOT=false. Based on this, Folkson believes that proposing LOT=false is the only option at this time to get the Taproot soft fork activated as early as possible. However, Ariel Lorenzo-Luaces argues that users are not forced to run any particular software version, and some voices in this discussion need to be more humble about what users must or must not run. He also suggests that if LOT=true is released, there may be only a handful of people who begin running it while everyone else delays their upgrade with the very good reason of not getting involved in politics, and a year later those handful of people just become stuck at the moment of MUST_SIGNAL, unable to mine new blocks. Additionally, he thinks that an activation mechanism is a consensus change like any other change and can be contentious like any other change, and we must resolve it like any other change. Otherwise, we risk arriving at the darkest timeline. Folkson acknowledges Ariel's concerns but is not convinced by his perception that LOT=true is antagonistic to miners. He actually thinks it offers them clarity on what will happen over a one-year time period and removes the need for coordinated or uncoordinated community UASF efforts on top of LOT=false. Finally, he recommends that LOT=false be set in protocol implementations such as Bitcoin Core.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T18:03:16.907974+00:00