Author: Tom Zander 2016-10-17 11:17:39
Published on: 2016-10-17T11:17:39+00:00
The discussion on bitcoin-dev mailing list has been around the safety concerns related to a longer grace period for SegWit. It has been mentioned that once the fork reaches LOCKED_IN status, companies will not roll out their updates until it locks in. Therefore, the lock-in time is not the end of the upgrading process. The entire point is that SegWit is much bigger than just full nodes (including miners), and an entire ecosystem of Bitcoin will have a need to upgrade. Although people are saying that non-miners don't need to upgrade in order to avoid being kicked off the network, it is necessary for them to participate in Bitcoin fully and understand all of it, not just the anyone-can-spend transactions.The discussion also raised concerns about the possibility of rolling back changes in case something goes wrong. There is no mechanism for rollbacks, and the whole point of the soft fork signaling is such that there is no need to roll back anything because miners have signaled that they are supporting the fork. However, there are still flaws that may exist in the software and may be exploited by those who want to abuse the system for their own gains. The amount of code and the number of changes in SegWit make it a dangerous change in Bitcoin. Ten core concepts in Bitcoin are being changed with it, and we do not yet know how they will interact. In conclusion, the developers on the list cannot decide the risk profile that Bitcoin using companies or individuals should have. The gamble involved in creating everyone-can-spend transactions, which would mean a loss of funds to everyone that used it if a major flaw was found and a rollback was necessary, makes many people uncomfortable.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T20:25:39.746459+00:00