Ryan Grant <bitcoin-...@rgrant.org> writes: > On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 11:58 PM Rusty Russell via bitcoin-dev > <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >> The core question always was: what do we do if miners fail to activate? >> >> [...] Speedy Trial takes the approach that "let's pretend we didn't >> *actually* ask [miners]". > > What ST is saying is that a strategy of avoiding unnecessary risk is > stronger than a strategy of brinkmanship when brinkmanship wasn't > our only option. Having deescalation in the strategy toolkit makes > Bitcoin stronger.
I don't believe that having a plan is brinkmanship or an escalation. During the segwit debate, Pieter Wuille said that users should decide. I've been thinking about that a lot, especially about what that means in a practical sense where the normal developer / miner dynamic has failed. >> It's totally a political approach, to avoid facing the awkward question. >> Since I believe that such prevaricating makes a future crisis less >> predictable, I am forced to conclude that it makes bitcoin less robust. > > LOT=true does face the awkward question, but there are downsides: > > - in the requirement to drop blocks from apathetic miners (although > as Luke-Jr pointed out in a previous reply on this list they have > no contract under which to raise a complaint); and Surely, yes. If the users of bitcoin decide blocks are invalid, they're invalid. With a year's warning, and developer and user consensus against them, I think we've reached the limits of acceptable miner apathy. > - in the risk of a chain split, should gauging economic majority > support - which there is zero intrinsic tooling for - go poorly. Agreed that we should definitely do better here: in practice people would rely on third party explorers for information on the other side of the split. Tracking the cumulative work on invalid chains would be a good idea for bitcoind in general (AJ suggested this, IIRC). >> Personally, I think the compromise position is using LOT=false and >> having those such as Luke and myself continue working on a LOT=true >> branch for future consideration. It's less than optimal, but I >> appreciate that people want Taproot activated more than they want >> the groundwork future upgrades. > > Another way of viewing the current situation is that should > brinkmanship be necessary, then better tooling to resolve a situation > that requires brinkmanship will be invaluable. But: > > - we do not need to normalize brinkmanship; > > - designing brinkmanship tooling well before the next crisis does > not require selecting conveniently completed host features to > strap the tooling onto for testing; and Again, openly creating a contingency plan is not brinkmanship, it's normal. I know that considering these scenarios is uncomfortable; I avoid conflict myself! But I feel obliged to face this as a real possibility. I think we should be normalizing the understanding that bitcoin users are the ultimate decider. By offering *all* of them the tools to do so we show this isn't lip-service, but something that businesses and everyone else in the ecosystem should consider. > - it's already the case that a UASF branch can be prepared along > with ST (ie. without requiring LOT=false), although the code is a > bit more complex and the appropriate stopheight a few blocks later. I don't believe this is true, unless you UASF before ST expires? ST is explicitly designed *not* to give time to conclude that miners are stalling (unless something has changed from the initial 3 month proposal?). > Although your NACK is well explained, for the reasons above I am > prepared to run code that overrides it. Good. In the end, we're all at the whim of the economic majority. Cheers! Rusty. _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
