Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP proposal: Generalized version bits voting (bip-genvbvoting)

From: Luke Dashjr <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2017 18:01:51 +0000

On Monday, April 03, 2017 9:06:02 AM Sancho Panza via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> While BIP9 has served the community reasonably well until now, the
> author remarks several shortcomings in its approach:
> 
> - it limits itself to backward-compatible changes, precluding its
> applicability to hard forks

BIP 9 doesn't limit itself, merely acknowledges the *inherent* nature of it 
not being applicable to hardforks. BIP 9 provides a mechanism for having 
miners coordinate softforks because they can make the upgrade process smoother 
this way. But the same is not true of hardforks: miners are essentially 
irrelevant to them, and cannot make the process any smoother. Therefore, BIP 9 
and any miner signalling in general is not very useful for deploying these.

> - a fixed 95% threshold is not flexible enough to allow for a 'spectrum
> of contentiousness' to be represented
> 
> - the 95% threshold allows small minorities to veto proposed changes,
> lead to stagnation (viz. current standoffs)

Softforks are not required to use BIP 9, and even if they do, they are not 
required to use the recommended thresholds.

Basically, the problems you're trying to solve don't exist...

Luke