Published on: 2022-05-01T22:41:44+00:00
The discussion revolves around the concept of rationality and how it relates to different goals. The author argues that rationality is subjective and depends on individual goals. They suggest that consensus should be established around goals to streamline conversations and share ideas. A futures market for predictions is proposed as a means to better understand people's goals without revealing them directly. However, it is noted that persistent irrationalities embedded in the design of the human mind will still be difficult to break.In the context of Bitcoin governance, the conversation focuses on achieving consensus among stakeholders. There is a proposal to determine representation based on the economic influence of different constituencies, including holders, transactors, miners, and developers. Various mechanisms such as coin-weighted polling, transaction signaling, miner signaling, and developer consensus reviews are suggested to measure support. However, there are concerns about the limitations and potential gaming of these methods.The issue of soft fork activation in Bitcoin is discussed, including the threshold for activating consensus changes and the representation of different constituencies in this process. The mailing list members agree that technical consensus alone is not enough to assess user consensus, and more rigorous methods are needed. There is a proposal for transaction signaling to allow users to have sybil-resistant influence over miner decisions. Concerns are raised about potential manipulation and false consensus.The conversation also addresses the flaws of the Aumann Agreement Theorem in the context of democracy and consensus building. It is suggested that improving human thinking, gathering relevant information, and accurately laying out goals can address these flaws. The importance of understanding the preferences of non-experts and non-technical people is emphasized, and clear explanations of proposed changes are seen as crucial.Different proposals and ideas are presented throughout the discussion, including polling that is not programmatically connected to activation, time-locked weighted voting, and combining rejection of blocks and transaction fees for signaling upgrades. Anticipated objections and questions are raised regarding these proposals, highlighting the need for further discussion and analysis.Overall, the conversation revolves around finding a logical solution to achieve consensus in Bitcoin governance, considering individual goals, economic influence, and user preferences. The limitations of existing methods and the importance of clarity, inclusivity, and understanding are emphasized in the quest for effective decision-making processes.Keagan suggests using transactions themselves to signal for upgrades by utilizing the free bits in the version field of a transaction. This would provide users with sybil-resistant influence over miner decisions and allow them to pressure miners to act on their behalf. The proposal aims to address the breakdown in civility around the debate on soft-fork activation and create a mechanism for measuring social consensus. However, there are concerns raised about the potential manipulation and false consensus that could result from such a system. Some argue that this proposal could be seen as "pay to play," giving wealthier individuals more decision-making power. The author agrees that wealth should not be able to dominate consensus decisions and sees the proposed mechanism as an improvement over the current situation where influential people decide consensus.Implementing this proposal would require its own soft fork, but the author acknowledges that there are concerns about certain parties, such as CoinJoin pool operators and L2 protocol implementations, having power over deciding consensus. Despite these concerns, it is seen as an improvement over the current status quo.The forum discusses various questions related to the proposal, including whether it affords a better view into consensus than the current system of miner signaling, whether it can be gamed to give a worse view into consensus, and whether it measures the right thing. The author also queries whether a BIP specification should be written to detail out the proposal.In addition to this proposal, the Bitcoin community is also discussing other methods of measuring user support for soft-fork changes. One suggestion involves weighted polling of holders to gauge consensus. However, this would not be directly connected to the activation mechanism and would only provide a means of gauging some portion of consensus.Overall, the Bitcoin community is actively debating how to measure user support for proposed soft-fork changes, aiming to ensure that technical consensus aligns with user consensus. Various proposals and concerns have been raised, highlighting the challenges and considerations involved in accurately measuring consensus in the cryptocurrency space.McClelland has proposed a mechanism that allows users to pressure miners into taking action on their behalf by using transactions themselves as a signal for an upgrade. He suggests utilizing the "free" bits in the version field of a transaction, which are currently ignored, to create rules where a transaction signaling in favor of an upgrade must not be included in a block that does not signal in favor of it. This would give users sybil-resistant influence over miner decisions. The proposal aims to provide miners with a better understanding of what users want and could be incorporated as an auxiliary feature of the soft fork deployment scheme.
Updated on: 2023-08-02T06:16:29.811662+00:00