Published on: 2021-06-30T19:42:50+00:00
A recent controversy over upgrade mechanisms for the taproot upgrade has sparked discussions on how to prevent chain splits and ensure smooth activation of soft forks. Currently, there are three signaling states for upgrades: actively supporting the change, actively opposing the change, or not signaling (default state). This allows miners who oppose the change to update their software and signal opposition while still remaining lazy, without significantly slowing down soft fork activation.To accurately estimate user sentiment, existing mechanisms such as community discussion, social consensus estimation, and miner signaling during deployment periods are used. However, these mechanisms provide rough estimates, so additional barriers are necessary for upgrades with higher thresholds of success. Ultimately, achieving majority hash power support is crucial for successful activation.In an email to the Bitcoin development mailing list, Eric Voskuil emphasized that there is no choice between creating a split and hash power enforcement. Soft forks are rule changes and require majority hash power enforcement to be compatible. Voskuil called out misleading statements about soft fork "compatibility" and activation without hash power enforcement, highlighting that it can indeed lead to a split. He emphasized that users decide the rules, not miners or developers, and mining is a way for anyone to have a say in the process.Luke Dashjr added that BIP8 LOT=True ensures miners cannot entirely block an upgrade but they can still slow it down. Users who oppose a soft fork should treat the successful signal as invalid, ensuring they do not follow a chain with the enforced rules. Billy Tetrud proposed using trinary version signaling instead of binary signaling for soft fork upgrades. This would allow for three signaling states: actively supporting the change, actively opposing the change, or not signaling. This additional information could expedite the release of non-contentious upgrades with a lower percentage of miners signaling support. For contentious upgrades, miners who oppose the change would be incentivized to update their software to actively signal opposition.The recent controversy surrounding upgrade mechanisms for the taproot upgrade has led to the proposal of a new soft fork upgrade mechanism. This mechanism uses trinary version signaling, allowing for three signaling states: actively support the change, actively oppose the change, or not signaling at all. By incorporating this additional information, non-contentious upgrades can be released more quickly with a lower percentage of miners signaling support. For contentious upgrades, miners who oppose the change are encouraged to update their software and actively signal opposition. The higher the threshold necessary to lock in the upgrade, the greater the opposition. This incentivizes lazy miners who oppose the change to update their software while still allowing them to remain lazy without significantly slowing down the soft fork activation.The proposal recommends discussing new soft fork upgrade mechanisms when there are no pressing soft fork upgrades ready to deploy. Delaying discussions until the need arises may lead to contention, as seen with the taproot upgrade. The author invites comments and feedback on the proposed mechanism through comments or GitHub issues on the proposal repository.
Updated on: 2023-08-02T04:14:50.370680+00:00