Author: Zheming Lin 2017-06-14 18:30:32
Published on: 2017-06-14T18:30:32+00:00
The discussion between Jameson and Zheming Lin involved the concept of user choice in Bitcoin's consensus rules. Zheming pointed out that users have a choice to abandon nodes, but only those who are passive, especially wallets, need to know there is a choice and pick one. The BIP can be applied to almost any upgrade, including Segwit, Segwit2x, 2m, ec, 8m, but the upgrade is not the key point. Jameson clarified that Bitcoin is not a democracy and voting is not accurate. Once a feature has been vetted and the code is deployed, miners may signal that they are ready to enforce new rules. If for some reason, miners are too passive or lazy or wish to veto the activation of the new rules, users may choose to circumvent said veto by refusing to accept blocks that do not show readiness for enforcing the new rules. On the matter of user choice, Zheming argued that it depends on whether wallet users trust the majority of miners or not. Users should have a choice to follow the miners or not. If they don't trust them, they can fork away and leave. But what remains will be united. The fundamental misconception regarding this point is that the white paper refers to majority hashpower needing to be honest with regard to determining the correct chain within the context of many possible/valid/chain forks. It is not referring to using hashpower to determine the correct chain amongst an infinitely variable number of currently invalid chain forks.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T02:30:44.189765+00:00