What to do when contentious soft fork activations are attempted

Summary:

In an email thread, Ryan Grant defends the OP_CTV covenant proposal after Jorge Timón questioned Andreas' criticism. Ryan argues that OP_CTV covenants cannot restrict any address that the sender does not control. He also criticizes Andreas for not code-reviewing BIP119 or the pull request and using a lot of words to describe how dangerous the change is. Ryan believes that Andreas did not look into the reason why the proposed client was safe and would not cause a chain split. Russell O'Connor's explanation for how Speedy Trials arose in the consensus process and how it was designed to make everyone unhappy is referenced. Ryan further believes that alternative clients are necessary because maintainers and "Big Name" developers have very personal reasons to take this stance. He suggests that there may be a couple of people trying to create dissent about this opinion. Ultimately, Ryan speculates that the "something better" crowd wants recursive covenants. In closing, Ryan mentions Andreas' summary of conservatism as being offensive to everyone trying to make bitcoins more protective of individual freedom and thus more valuable.The discussion revolves around the concept of covenants in Bitcoin and the contributions made by individuals towards it. The video "Q&A with aantonop" discusses various topics related to covenants, regulations, and El Salvador. The speaker mentions that for those who want to do smart contracts, working on covenants is important. The conversation leads to the path of redemption in the Bitcoin community and how helping Bitcoin can lead to it.Jeremy's efforts towards advancing the covenants discussion are sincere and judged based on concrete contributions. Even if certain opcodes are never activated, Bitcoin is more secure due to critical bug fixes that Jeremy has already seen merged. Andreas is encouraged to research technical merits before communicating and join the vision of powerful contract covenants for decentralized money that can affect people's freedom.In a separate conversation, there is a mention of Bip8, and how someone needs to be open-minded to understand its analysis. The discussion then moves to a general talk about covenants, including "visacoin" described on technical Bitcoin forums. It is suggested that instead of just criticizing what others have done, one should work on their own covenant proposals.

Updated on: 2023-06-15T20:04:10.045393+00:00