Author: Erik Aronesty 2017-06-07 18:05:52
Published on: 2017-06-07T18:05:52+00:00
A proposal has been made for a coordination mechanism between miners to prevent a chain split ahead of the August 1st BIP148 activation date. The proposed splitprotection soft fork would activate mandatory SegWit signaling by miners using a simple majority of 65% over a 504 block interval, rather than a higher percentage. This deployment is compatible with the existing "segwit" bit 1 deployment scheduled between midnight November 15th, 2016 and midnight November 15th, 2017, as well as the existing BIP148 deployment. While this bip is active users should either upgrade to splitprotection or wait for additional developments. However, some experts have argued that passing it off as the safest defense is bad faith, as it may not be the safest option against a split.To address concerns regarding the safety of the splitprotection proposal, the proposed BIP8 allows for a lower signaling threshold of a soft fork while it is being deployed in a backwards compatible way. This can be accomplished by using the IsSuperMajority() technique historically used to activate soft forks, such as BIP66 which has a mandatory signaling requirement for miners. The BIP8 style timeout ensures compatibility with BIP148 and that BIP148-compatible mandatory signaling activates regardless of miner signaling levels.By orphaning non-signaling blocks during the BIP9 bit 1 "segwit" deployment, the BIP8 proposal can cause the existing "segwit" deployment to activate without needing to release a new deployment. As we approach BIP148 activation, it may be desirable for a majority of miners to have a method that will ensure that there is no chain split.The document proposing these mechanisms is dual-licensed as BSD 3-clause and Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal. References include mailing list discussions, BIPs related to version bits, pay to script hash, reduced threshold Segwit MASF, segregated witness (consensus layer), transaction signature verification for version 0 witness program, dealing with dummy stack element malleability, mandatory activation of segwit deployment, and segregated witness (second deployment).
Updated on: 2023-06-12T01:59:14.855747+00:00