Author: Matt Corallo 2017-01-28 00:35:55
Published on: 2017-01-28T00:35:55+00:00
The email discusses the controversial idea of an extension block, which would allow for more block space through a soft fork. While soft forks are generally preferable to hard forks, the extension block proposal enters into "coerciveness" territory.With an extension block, a majority of transactions on the network would happen in data that those who choose not to enforce the soft fork's rules have decided to ignore. This makes it difficult to walk back transaction history and identify risk based on potential censorship-enforced-transactions. Additionally, this forces the entire network to trust the extension block instead of opting into a soft fork's security.The email argues that this sets us up for some pretty terrible precedent; the idea that miners will start soft-forking in sidechains is a massive risk. Finally, the email emphasizes that while this may be an interesting academic topic, there is a significant social cost associated with implementing an extension block.On a different note, the proposal describes a method for sending bitcoins from the main UTXO to an xUTXO, where people can trade inside the xblock just like in the main block. The integration of UTXO and transaction is explained in detail, including special bridging witness programs for returning transactions and fees collection in xblock.The proposal also discusses the challenge of sending money back from the xblock to the main block, which requires 100-block maturity for the returning UTXO. The author acknowledges that this drastically changes the user experience and suggests the use of a decentralised market to exchange value between the blocks.The proposal raises questions about simplifying the design without compromising security, eliminating the 100-block maturity requirement, and reducing the maturity time. The direction flag is needed to ensure that the recipient won't be paid with a returning transaction unless explicitly requested and may be combined with the serialised witness version to save one byte.Overall, the proposal is presented for discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T00:47:08.211344+00:00