Author: Gregory Maxwell 2017-06-13 18:11:39
Published on: 2017-06-13T18:11:39+00:00
In a recent discussion on bitcoin-dev, a user named Zheming Lin proposed an improvement in Bitcoin's consensus protocol to address the issue of non-mining wallet nodes being passive and lazy in upgrading. However, another user pointed out that this claim is not true and that non-mining wallet nodes were considered even in the first version of the software. The enforcement of the system's rules by users broadly, not just miners, is critical for the security of Bitcoin. It is often miners who are slow in upgrading, and some do not even run a node at all but simply sell their hash power to pools. Reliability cannot be maintained if infrastructure is rapidly changing, and upgrades often happen slower than the entire life of Bitcoin so far. Many people in the Bitcoin community have unrealistic expectations with how fast upgrading can occur while preserving stability, security, and decentralization.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T03:03:49.074634+00:00