Author: Matt Corallo 2021-02-28 16:45:22
Published on: 2021-02-28T16:45:22+00:00
There has been significant debate around the activation method for the proposed Taproot soft fork, with individuals committing themselves to running incompatible consensus rules. This could potentially cause harm if a fork were to occur as a result. The ongoing debate and lack of consensus have likely delayed any possible release of a future Taproot activation while issues around locked-in activation are debated.One way to keep the network in consensus would be to simply activate Taproot through a traditional, no-frills, flag-day (or -height) activation with a flag day of roughly August 2022. This approach meets several criteria laid out by Matt, including the lack of significant objection, high node-level adoption, and public commitment from mining pool operators and large Bitcoin business operators.The potential loss of hashpower is the biggest risk of this approach, but it can be mitigated by seeking more immediate commitment prior to release. A flag-day activation takes advantage of the nonstandardness of Taproot transactions in current Bitcoin Core releases, which may suffice.Ultimately, the risk present in doing flag day activations is also present in BIP 8(true), forced-signaling activations where community debate splits the consensus rules across nodes. While such a deployment could delay Taproot somewhat, it sidesteps a sufficient amount of debate and resulting delay that it may be worth considering.Taproot activation has been worked on for many years now with no apparent urgency from those who are suddenly expressing activation urgency, making it more likely such urgency is artificial. Those who seek Taproot activation for Bitcoin market reasons should rejoice as the market celebrates the final release of Taproot, and gets a second celebratory event in 2022 when the activation occurs.
Updated on: 2023-05-21T01:20:01.995509+00:00