Author: Zheming Lin 2017-06-13 08:24:41
Published on: 2017-06-13T08:24:41+00:00
This document presents a proposal for incentivizing and protecting mining and non-mining nodes during protocol upgrading in the Bitcoin network. The proposed method involves miners activating and orphaning lower version blocks after the first grace period and then invalidating transactions from nodes not upgrading after the second grace period. Nodes must upgrade with other protocol upgrade codes in order to work, and at the end of the process, miner voting will ensure the broad deployment of the protocol upgrade.The motivation behind this proposal is to ensure the asset security of wallet nodes and provide additional incentives for them to upgrade their protocols. This method can also prevent chain splitting and adverse impacts on the security of wallet nodes. The specification section describes the use of versionbits and tx versions to define support signals and current version transactions respectively. The deployment process will have three stages, with an optional fourth stage to integrate codes of protocol upgrade. The benefits of this proposal include the activation by a majority of miners after signaling, minimal possibility of delaying network upgrades through controlling less computing power, sufficient time for wallet node upgrades, and compatibility with SPV mining processes. Overall, this proposal seeks to ensure a smooth and gradual protocol upgrade that protects all nodes in the Bitcoin network.A new activation method has been proposed that only requires a majority of miner signals to upgrade the protocol. This is expected to minimize the possibility of delaying network upgrades by controlling a small number of hashing power. After 51% signalling, all miners are expected to upgrade within the first grace period. During the first two grace periods, non-mining nodes will not be affected and have enough time to upgrade their software. The versionbits included in block header does not influence the SPY mining. After two grace periods, all nodes must be upgraded to support new protocols. Otherwise, they cannot send transactions or get any confirmations. However, this situation is not worse than before, as compared to forming new consensus among nodes. Non-mining wallet nodes' ledger will be honored and reserved. Users of off-chain wallet services can decide whether or not to follow the service providers after they receive public notification from the service providers. In the future, protocol upgrades can be bonded with node upgrades, and they can activate through miners vote independently. There would be enough time for nodes to upgrade to support new protocols. Some risks include the fluctuation of hashing power affecting the result of the longest chain, and the possibility of miners and non-mining nodes conspiring to fork using old protocol consensus. However, these risks can be reduced by upgrading most passive non-mining nodes. Implementation details are yet to be determined.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T02:37:04.018590+00:00