Author: Andrew C 2016-10-17 13:19:29
Published on: 2016-10-17T13:19:29+00:00
In an email exchange on the bitcoin-dev list, Tom Zander argued that SegWit is much bigger than just full nodes and that an entire ecosystem of Bitcoin will have a need to upgrade. He further added that it's rather odd to think that developers on this list can decide the risk profile that Bitcoin using companies or individuals should have. To which another member responded that no major Bitcoin companies have raised any such issues with Segwit and in fact many already have the upgrade in the works. Zander also stated that flaws may still exist in software even if miners run the latest version and that people who see a way to abuse the system may have found things and are not reporting it because they want to abuse the flaw for their own gains. However, the other member countered that SegWit has been tested extensively for a much longer period of time and waiting any longer isn't likely to help given that so much testing and review has already been done. The discussion then moved to the question of whether having a longer fallow period makes SegWit any safer. Zander argued that companies will not roll out their updates until lock-in is confirmed, while the other member suggested that a lot of the wallets listed as WIP have code ready and tested, just not officially released. They also mentioned that it doesn't take two months to roll out a software update that is already prepared beforehand.Finally, the discussion touched upon the amount of code and changes in SegWit, which Zander considers to be a very dangerous change in (of?) Bitcoin. He counted 10 core concepts in Bitcoin being changed with it and stated that we don't yet know how they will interact. However, the other member pointed out that SegWit has been active on four different segwit-specific testnets and on Testnet for the past several months, allowing for extensive testing and review of its various aspects.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T20:25:59.613842+00:00