From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org>
To: Luke Dashjr <luke@dashjr•org>
Cc: bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP: Block signal enforcement via tx fees
Date: Sat, 13 May 2017 08:48:48 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20170513124848.GC8884@fedora-23-dvm> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <201705130049.33798.luke@dashjr.org>
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On Sat, May 13, 2017 at 12:49:33AM +0000, Luke Dashjr wrote:
> On Friday 12 May 2017 10:22:14 PM Peter Todd wrote:
> > nVersion signaling is already technically unenforceable, in the sense that
> > we don't have good ways of ensuring miners actually adopt the rules
> > they're claiming to signal. Equally, it's users who ultimately adopt
> > rules, not miners, and attempting to pay miners to signal certain bits
> > will further confuse this point.
>
> This BIP doesn't change that. Enforcement remains primarily by users.
I'm not arguing that it changes that; I'm arguing that it further confuses the
situation.
> > Quite likely the outcome of users trying to anonymously pay anonymous
> > miners to signal certain bits will be the complete breakdown of the
> > honesty of the nVersion signalling system, currently enforced only by
> > "gentlemans agreement".
>
> You assume users will pay for signalling of softforks prematurely. So long as
> it waits until deployment of the softfork is widespread, this risk is minimal.
> At worst, it creates risks similar to a UASF. So long as UASF is the
> alternative, this way seems strictly better.
I think you're assuming that the users paying for soft-fork signalling will
represent an economic majority; that's not necessarily the case.
For example, if miners decide there's no downside to false signalling, they may
take the extra fees provided by 1% of the users paying to signal a fork, while
the other 99% don't participate, resulting in a situation where we have blocks
violating the nVersion protocol, and an unknown % of that 99% rejecting those
blocks. At best that'd be no worse than a UASF, and at wost you're wrecked the
validity of the nVersion "gentlemans agreement"
> > Also, as an aside, this "specification" again shows the inadequacy and
> > unreadability of English language specifications. I'd strongly suggest you
> > delete it and instead mark the "reference implementation" as the
> > specification.
>
> How so?
Just read it: you have ten separate lines of dense English text describing
something that could have been specified instead by ten lines of much more
formally defined C++. In particular, note how many of those lines of English
text refer to C++ code anyway, like the sentence "minimal-length 40-bit
CScriptNum"
I don't want to have to learn another language - formally defined English that
still fails to be formally defined - just to read Bitcoin's specification.
--
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2017-05-13 12:49 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2017-05-12 19:22 Luke Dashjr
2017-05-12 22:17 ` ZmnSCPxj
2017-05-12 22:22 ` Peter Todd
2017-05-13 0:49 ` Luke Dashjr
2017-05-13 3:26 ` Eric Voskuil
2017-05-13 3:54 ` ZmnSCPxj
2017-05-13 5:36 ` Eric Voskuil
2017-05-13 5:45 ` Luke Dashjr
2017-05-13 6:43 ` Eric Voskuil
2017-05-13 12:48 ` Peter Todd [this message]
2017-05-13 16:42 ` Luke Dashjr
2017-05-13 4:23 ` Russell O'Connor
2017-05-13 5:26 ` Luke Dashjr
2017-05-13 17:11 ` Russell O'Connor
2017-05-15 1:14 ` Rusty Russell
2017-05-20 5:05 ` Anthony Towns
2017-05-14 12:18 ` ZmnSCPxj
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