Author: Russell O'Connor 2022-05-11 19:22:40
Published on: 2022-05-11T19:22:40+00:00
The concept of a MUST_SIGNAL state for BIP8 activation method has been deemed unnecessary by a user on the Bitcoin Developers forum. Originally, the purpose of mandatory signaling was to ensure that all existing clients waiting for SegWit signaling would be activated simultaneously with any BIP8 clients. However, this is no longer necessary as there are currently no other clients to activate alongside a BIP8 deployment. Additionally, version bit signaling could be used instead of a MUST_SIGNAL state, but it risks losing mining power if miners don't conform or are unable to conform to the signal over multiple blocks. Therefore, a soft-fork signal to enable an "anti-fork" only needs to be on a single block and can be almost anything. In conclusion, there are many design choices available that are better than a MUST_SIGNAL state that does not risk potentially taking a large fraction of mining hardware offline for a protracted period of time.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T20:44:35.517167+00:00