Author: Adam Back 2021-02-19 12:05:09
Published on: 2021-02-19T12:05:09+00:00
The debate surrounding the activation of Taproot and the risk of chain splits has led to discussions on the best activation method. Some suggest that a LOT=true or false option would be useful for safety, given that both options seem safe in the current context where many are saying "are we there yet," including pools. However, rushed proposals and code reviews can be dangerous, and there is debate around whether dev consensus around releasing LOT=false would be considered as "developers forcing their views on users." There are concerns about the risk of reorgs during activation, and some argue that Bitcoin is a consensus system, and that the worst outcome is to have it fall out of consensus. Others argue that soft forks like Taproot greatly benefit Bitcoin and that the risk has been minimized. The likely scenario for Taproot is that miners activate it before LOT becomes relevant. If different implementations ship different consensus rules, there should be no activation of Taproot to avoid it falling out of consensus. The bitcoin-dev mailing list has been discussing whether to set LOT (lockinontimeout) to true or false for Taproot activation. Michael Folkson proposed setting LOT=false in protocol implementations such as Bitcoin Core, but Ariel Lorenzo-Luaces argues that some voices in the discussion need to be more humble about what users must or must not run. An activation mechanism is a consensus change like any other change, can be contentious like any other change, and we must resolve it like any other change, otherwise, we risk arriving at the darkest timeline. The Bitcoin Taproot meeting held on February 16th was largely unproductive, except for coming to consensus on everything but LockinOnTimeout. The activation height range proposed is 693504-745920, with a MASF threshold of 1815/2016 blocks (90%). While some mining pools expressed a preference for LOT=false, it remains difficult to gauge how strong that preference actually was. After evaluating the discussions and opinions shared prior to and during the meeting, Michael Folkson is of the opinion that proposing LOT=false is the best course of action at this time. He believes any further delay would be counterproductive to the collective aim of activating the Taproot soft fork as early as possible. Code review of the Bitcoin Core PR #19573 has been scheduled for Tuesday, February 23rd at 19:00 UTC on the IRC channel ##taproot-activation. Despite the lack of consensus, he thanked all the participants who engaged productively and in good faith throughout the meetings and discussions. It would be friendly and useful if bitcoin-core has a LOT=true option, which goes some way to avoid assumptive control via defaults. There are debates over whether users should be forced to choose between LOT=true or false without context. A thing that could be done without mandating either LOT=true or LOT=false would be to have a release that requires a `taprootlot=1` or `taprootlot=0` and refuses to start if the parameter is not set. This assures everyone that neither choice is being forced on users, and instead what is being forced on users is for users to make that choice themselves.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T17:55:51.193096+00:00