User Activated Soft Fork Split Protection

Summary:

The success of UASF (User Activated Soft Fork) is difficult to measure directly and hard numbers are not readily available. Of the few hard numbers available, mining commitments and node signaling represent some data but upvotes and comments on forums do not provide a clear supermajority. The statistics available do not support the idea that UASF has any chance of success. Markets will indicate better as we get closer to BIP148 activation.Segwit2x is insisting on activation bundling which complicates and delays SegWit activation. Technical changes can be made for political reasons. Wipeout risk is different from chain abandonment and hashpower follows economy. Miners will likely follow the BIP148 side of the chain assuming it has sufficient economic support or if it's more profitable to mine. Without replay protection, the UASF chain is unlikely to develop any viable fee market. Proper replay protection was added by wallets mainly using splitting contracts in ETC/ETH split time. A big reason BIP148 still has support is because until SegWit actually activates, there's no guarantee segwit2mb will have the necessary support to activate SegWit.The issue of activation timelines for BIP91 and the risks of a chain split were discussed in a conversation between Jared Lee Richardson and James Hilliard. The bundling of SW and HF parts of segwit2x was identified as a major reason for the delay in BIP91 activation, but unbundling was deemed impossible without breaking consensus. While BIP148 has support due to uncertainty about segwit2mb's activation of SegWit, there are concerns about its inflexibility and lack of replay protection. The possibility of a risky chainsplit with BIP148 was also raised, as it may only become a small minority chain without segwit2x. However, economic support and hashpower can mitigate this risk, as miners will mine whichever chain is most profitable, and BIP91 can be signaled on a different bit than bit4 if necessary.James Hilliard, a Bitcoin developer, has proposed a new option for miners to prevent a potential chain split ahead of the August 1st BIP148 activation date. The proposal is called "splitprotection" and is essentially BIP91 but uses BIP8 instead of BIP9 with a lower activation threshold and immediate mandatory signalling lock-in. Hilliard believes that this will allow for a majority of miners to activate mandatory SegWit signalling and prevent a potential chain split ahead of BIP148 activation. It also allows miners to signal their intention to run BIP148 in order to prevent a chain split.Jared Lee Richardson, another Bitcoin developer, sees the proposal as a gamble that may not be a good one. He argues that if the segwit2x signatories balk about the Bit1 signaling or if the timelines for segwit2mb are missed even by a bit, it may cause the BIP148 chainsplit to be worse than it would be without. He says that the proposal seems like a very dangerous attempt to compromise with a small but vocal group that are the ones creating the threat to begin with.Hilliard believes that the biggest risk of BIP148 is an extended chain split and his proposal provides a way for a simple majority of miners to eliminate that risk. The primary goal of the proposal is to reduce the chance of an extended chain split as much as possible by activating using a simple miner majority of 65% over a 504 block interval rather than a higher percentage. However, at this point, it is not completely clear how much economic support there is for BIP148. Support certainly seems to be growing, but there are still nearly two months until BIP148 activation.This document describes the implementation of a mandatory segwit signaling process known as SPLITPROTECTION. The implementation is designed to lower the signaling threshold for a soft fork while it is in the process of being deployed in a backward-compatible way. The new process is compatible with the existing "segwit" bit 1 deployment scheduled between midnight November 15th, 2016, and midnight November 15th, 2017. It is also compatible with the existing BIP148 deployment. However, miners will need to upgrade their nodes to support split protection; otherwise, they may build on top of an invalid block.The implementation uses a BIP8 style timeout to ensure that this BIP is compatible with BIP148, and BIP148 compatible mandatory signaling activates regardless of miner signaling levels. By orphaning non-signaling blocks during the BIP9 bit 1 "segwit" deployment, this BIP can cause the existing "segwit" deployment to activate without needing to release a new deployment.

Updated on: 2023-06-12T01:45:53.843480+00:00