Published on: 2013-03-13T20:14:24+00:00
In a recent email exchange within the Bitcoin community, the topic of dropping support for old nodes was discussed. It was deemed unreasonable to implement a hardfork without proper discussion and consensus from the majority of the network. Pieter Wuille proposed a solution to address the issue of a block causing version 0.7 to "get stuck" by releasing version 0.8.1 as a stopgap measure. However, it was suggested that the new version should not precisely emulate the old behavior to avoid issues for nodes using version 0.7. Instead, a network with a mix of version 0.8.1 and version 0.7 nodes would eliminate the risk of a fork.Michael Gronager clarified that the issues were in version 0.7 and below, not in 0.8. He argued against changing features in 0.8 to accommodate previous versions, stating that it would not be a viable solution for future situations. The way forward suggested was to create a 0.8.1 version that mimics the old behavior while fixing the lock limit issue. Patches can also be provided for 0.7 and previous branches to enforce the same limit as 0.8.1. A hard fork will eventually be necessary to drop the 0.8.1 limit, but widespread community consensus is required.The author emphasizes the importance of adhering to the established protocol, as version 0.8's failure to do so has created an issue. They propose a "considerate mining" setup where pools run on either the newest or second newest version (e.g. 0.8), but connect to the rest of the network only through a node of the other version (e.g. 0.7). This ensures that no blocks will be rejected by either version and that the two combined will make up the majority of the network.In a discussion about increasing the blocksize limit to accommodate increased transaction volume, there is disagreement over whether to pursue off-chain transactions or not. However, it is acknowledged that the blocksize limit will likely be raised in less than two years due to pressure from big businesses using the chain. The vision has always been to scale up and limiting the blockchain to single-digit transactions-per-second is not an option. Off-chain transactions will also be necessary for instantly confirmed transactions. Gavin Andresen argues that raising the block size limit is necessary to scale up the blockchain, but believes the discussion should be postponed until version 0.8.1 is released.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T04:33:37.332961+00:00