Author: Eric Voskuil 2021-02-28 20:38:13
Published on: 2021-02-28T20:38:13+00:00
The discussion among Bitcoin developers regarding the Taproot activation has brought up various concerns. The main dilemma is how to change the consensus rules without causing a chain split. Eric Voskuil suggests that a 51% attack is the only option that does not create a split, but it can still fail. Matt Corallo refers to his previous list of goals and explains that mandatory signaling blatantly ignores one of them- goal (3), which results in any miner who has not taken active action generating invalid blocks. Jeremy Rubin agrees with much of the logic presented by Matt but believes that releasing a flag day without releasing the LOT=true code leading up to that flag day means that clients would not be fully compatible with an early activation that could be proposed before the flag day is reached. He thinks that a fixed activation date may be largely superior for business purposes and software engineering schedules. Jeremy also mentions that BIP-8 was intended to be simpler to agree on to maintain consensus. However, this situation presents a tiny parameter that has the potential to cause great network disruption and confusion. It is therefore much simpler and more likely to be universally understood by all network participants to just have a flag day. Matt explains that mandatory signaling is effectively two flag days- one for the signaling rule and one for the taproot type. However, he feels that Taproot took too long but at least if it's locked in, people can just build things assuming it exists. Most of the discussion has been focused on who is in charge, but Bitcoin requires no identity; anyone can mine and/or accept bitcoin - nobody is in charge.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T18:45:18.921355+00:00