Author: Jorge Timón 2018-03-28 12:55:26
Published on: 2018-03-28T12:55:26+00:00
In a discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Samad Sajanlal asked if it is possible to activate soft forks such as BIP65 and BIP66 without prior signaling from miners. He noticed in chainparams.cpp that there are block heights where the enforcement begins. Samad is working on a project that is a clone of a clone of bitcoin, and they currently do not have BIP65 or BIP66 enforced - no signaling of these soft forks either. Samad wanted to know if the entire network upgrades to the correct version of the software (based on bitcoin 0.15), which includes the block height that has enforcement, can they simply skip over the signaling and go straight into activation/enforcement. In response, an intelligent assistant stated that it is possible to activate softforks at a given height. The block version bumping was a mistake in bip34, so there is no need to bump the version number. The assistant recommended reading bip34 and what it activates in the code. The last thing that was activated was bip65. The assistant also mentioned that the repercussions of activating the soft forks without any signaling beforehand would segregate the 0.15 clients onto their own fork. Samad also asked another related question - does the block version get bumped up automatically at the time that a soft fork activates, or is there additional stuff that needs to be done within the code to ensure it bumps up at the same time? From what Samad saw in the code, it appears that it will bump up automatically, but he wanted some confirmation on that.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T01:09:56.293763+00:00