Author: Matt Corallo 2020-09-14 02:11:32
Published on: 2020-09-14T02:11:32+00:00
Michael Folkson, a member of the Bitcoin community, has shared his initial thoughts on some meta questions around Signet(s) in a post on the bitcoin-dev mailing list. He suggests that having a "default" Signet with a network effect would be beneficial for testing proposed soft fork(s) and avoiding numerous splintered Signet networks with different combinations of proposed soft forks enabled. However, there need to be formal understandings of at what stage a proposed soft fork should be enabled on "default" Signet, which could present challenges if soft forks are enabled and then change/get updated.Assuming there is a "default" Signet, Michael raises questions about how many people and who should have keys to sign each new block, what to do if one of these keys is lost or stolen, and whether "default" Signet should be reset at regular intervals. Currently, it is a 1-of-2 multisig with Kalle Alm and AJ Towns having keys, but it was suggested to have at least one additional key present in the EU/US timezone so blocks can continue to be mined during an Asia-Pacific outage. Kalle believes that Signet should keep running indefinitely unless specific problems arise.There is also concern from some in the community that testnet will somehow be replaced by Signet, but Michael assures that testnet will continue as long as someone out there is mining testnet blocks. However, there is the question of whether testnet needs to be reset since it was last reset in 2012. Assuming Signet is successful, there will be less testing on testnet, but certain testing use cases will still prefer testnet. It has been argued that testnet should be a large chain to stress test certain IBD, P2P scenarios, in which case it may be the case that we don't want to reset testnet. All other testing use cases would not be impacted by the downsides of a large chain as they would gravitate towards Signet regardless.Michael encourages thoughts, feedback, and questions from the Bitcoin community to ensure that everyone's testing needs are being considered. There is a closed issue on the Bitcoin Core repo for prior conversation, but ideally, discussion that isn't directly impacting Bitcoin Core should take place on the mailing list or on IRC. The first Signet PR in Bitcoin Core is at an advanced stage of review, and additional code review and testing of that PR is encouraged.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T23:47:42.858515+00:00