Author: Eric Voskuil 2021-06-26 22:05:05
Published on: 2021-06-26T22:05:05+00:00
The recent controversy over upgrade mechanisms for the non-controversial taproot upgrade has spurred discussions on how to prevent chain splits. BIP8 LOT=True ensures miners cannot block an upgrade entirely, but activation without majority hash power does not prevent a split. Billy Tetrud proposed a solution that uses trinary version signaling rather than binary signaling. For any particular prospective soft fork upgrade, this allows for three signaling states: actively support the change, actively oppose the change, or not signaling. This gives an incentive for "lazy" miners to upgrade if they actually oppose the change while allowing them to remain lazy without slowing down the soft fork activation much. Soft fork enforcement is accomplished by mining (or paying others to do so). Anyone can mine, so everyone gets a say. Mining is trading capital now for more later. If enough people want to do that, they can enforce a soft fork. It’s time Bitcoiners stop thinking of miners as other people. Anyone can mine, and that’s your vote. Otherwise, anyone can start a new coin, but it’s dishonest to imply that one can do this and all others will surely follow. This cannot be known; it’s merely a gamble. And it’s one that has been shown to not always pay off.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T23:30:53.605789+00:00