Author: Chris Belcher 2021-03-02 18:21:59
Published on: 2021-03-02T18:21:59+00:00
The purpose of miner signalling is not to enforce new rules but to avoid a chain split by essentially doing a 51% attack. This is not a bug but an inherent part of the way Bitcoin works. In a hypothetical chain split, both LOT=true and LOT=false chains would suffer from downsides. The LOT=false chain would be vulnerable to reorgs, while the LOT=true would suffer from slow blocks. Both chains suffer if a chain split happens which is why they are important to avoid.Luke Dashjr via bitcoin-dev argues against using LOT=false because giving miners a veto creates an incentive to second-guess the decision to activate and/or hold the activation hostage, which puts users and the network at significant risk. Even if we trust miners to act ethically, that does not justify sustaining the bug creating both a possibility and incentive to behave unethically. LOT=False puts users and the network at significant risk in all possible scenarios, whereas LOT=True minimizes risk to everyone and has no risk to users running LOT=True. BIP 8(LOT=True) combines the certainty of such a flag day, with the speed improvement of a MASF, so that softforks can be activated both reasonably quick and safely. Miners will simply upgrade and signal, and activation can occur as soon as the economic majority is expected to have had time to upgrade. The overall risk is maximally reduced by LOT=True being the only deployed parameter, and any introduction of LOT=False only increases risk probability and severity.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T18:49:56.562563+00:00