Published on: 2015-06-30T18:23:15+00:00
On June 30, 2015, there were email exchanges discussing the implementation of full Replace-by-Fee (RBF) in Bitcoin transactions. Peter Todd believed that contracts were being worked on due to inconsistent use of the first-seen protocol by some miners. Adam Back suggested deploying full-RBF in an opt-in way to transition towards trust-based and lightning/payment channel solutions. He warned about the risks of abruptly stopping the first-seen miner and relay policy. The impact of Invertible Bloom Lookup Tables (IBLT) on the first-seen policy was discussed between Chris Pacia and Adam Back. It was suggested that if a miner used full RBF while others used first-seen, their blocks would be at a disadvantage in terms of propagation. However, this disadvantage could be compensated for by higher fees. The discussion also highlighted the importance of fast block relaying for Bitcoin.Adam Back and David Harding discussed the support for opt-in full-RBF. Harding suggested bundling it with BIP62 version-2 transactions, but noted that it may delay the full BIP62 implementation. The conversation also touched upon the potential risks and consequences of meddling with successful usage patterns.Peter Todd raised concerns about payment providers entering into legal contracts with large miners, leading to centralization risks and potential 51% attacks. He suggested that nodes incentivize their peers to relay standard transactions to benefit the P2P network as a whole. The discussion also covered the benefits of full-RBF functionality in broadening what the P2P network relays.In another email exchange, Natanael expressed frustration over unresponsive recipients and concerns over the security of a proposed system. Tom Harding dismissed the idea of a sybil attack, while Natanael argued that the check means nothing unless one pays for hosting of that particular node. The conversation between Natanael and another person focused on the security and feasibility of a proposed feature. Natanael believed that the system would fail to a sybil attack, while the other person disagreed, stating that checking if a node relays something is similar to banning it for relaying garbage.These email exchanges highlight concerns about centralization risks, the impact of RBF on transaction propagation, the importance of fast block relaying, and debates about the role of policy in Bitcoin's development process.In an email exchange on June 29, 2015, Luke Dashjr and another participant disagreed on the role of BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals) in determining policy for nodes and miners. Luke argued that policy decisions are not within the scope of BIPs, while the other participant believed that BIPs can be used for best practices and coordination purposes.Peter Todd sent a message on the same day requesting Gregory to assign a BIP number to his proposal for full Replace-by-Fee (RBF) and transaction deadline functionality. However, Luke responded that such policy decisions should be left to the discretion of nodes and miners instead of being determined by proposals.The document presented is Peter Todd's proposal for the deployment schedule of Full Replace-by-Fee (Full-RBF) functionality. It suggests an automatic activation on April 5th, 2016 at 3 pm UTC, where supporting relay nodes and miners will enable full-RBF mempool behavior on the mainnet. Prior to the activation deadline, these nodes and miners will support first-seen-safe replace-by-fee (FSS-RBF) mempool behavior.The proposal highlights the efficiency advantages of Full-RBF over alternatives like FSS-RBF and Child-Pays-For-Parent for various transaction patterns and smart contract protocols. It states that miner support for Full-RBF would allow the Bitcoin community to use the blockchain more efficiently, handling more transactions per second with less blockchain space.The proposal also addresses concerns about double-spends and centralization risks. It acknowledges that decentralized wallets have limited ability to protect users from double-spends and that large payment providers may resort to extreme measures, such as entering into legal contracts with large miners, to ensure their transactions get mined. This poses a significant risk of centralization. The proposal aims to provide an orderly and planned upgrade that has been well-tested and considers potential DoS attacks.To maximize engineer availability, the deadline for the upgrade was set at the start of the week and away from public holidays. The nine-month timeframe was chosen to allow affected companies sufficient time to plan for the upgrade without delaying it excessively. The proposal includes references and is made available in the public domain.Overall, the context discusses the debate over BIPs' role in determining policy for nodes and miners, Peter Todd's proposal for Full-RBF functionality, its advantages, and considerations for an orderly implementation. It also addresses concerns about double-spends and centralization risks in the Bitcoin network.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T14:08:53.854240+00:00