Author: alicexbt 2022-09-28 20:01:46
Published on: 2022-09-28T20:01:46+00:00
Michael Folkson suggests implementing proposed soft fork proposals on a custom public signet rather than the default signet to avoid gatekeeping by block signers and to allow for more experimentation. He proposes adding more maintainers experienced in reviewing consensus code, discussing every soft fork implementation on the mailing list before merging the pull request, requiring at least 2 ACKs from maintainers and 3 ACKs from developers who have authored or reviewed enough consensus-related pull requests, and resolving every technical NACK from any developer or user before merging the pull request. Folkson believes that running custom signet with certain trade-offs can solve the issue of gatekeeping since signet coins have no value. The custom signet will only help the Bitcoin development process by experimenting with soft forks, and it will be easier to implement several consensus changes and compare alternatives in a better way. Even though this experiment has several advantages, it is difficult to solve the gatekeeping issue on several levels already existing in Bitcoin development.The default signet in Bitcoin Core is directly supported with the -signet flag, and even if the proposed soft fork code is moved to an external repo to avoid being merged into Core prematurely, it still determines what soft forks are accessible from the signet flag in Bitcoin Core. Folkson does not think it is fair on the signet block signers to put them in that position and does not believe it is wise to put other Bitcoin Core contributors/maintainers in the position of having to defend why some proposed soft forks are accessible on the default signet while others aren't.Mainnet and Testnet have already been removed from the 'bitcoin-inquisition/bitcoin' repository, and signet in Bitcoin Core is largely used by developers or power users, thus it should not be a problem. Signet could also be removed from Bitcoin Core binaries that are released regularly while being available if built from source.
Updated on: 2023-06-16T00:18:07.953414+00:00