From: Ali Sherief <ali@notatether•com>
To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] The Future of Bitcoin Testnet
Date: Thu, 2 May 2024 00:10:43 -0700 (PDT) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <52654980-c4f1-4d8e-a305-3a34c01b8599n@googlegroups.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <6a787f0d-db85-48fe-9e00-217ccd2a0f2f@mattcorallo.com>
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I think the effort required to remove testnet entirely would be too much to
work on. Replacing it with something else is a better idea to minimize
disruption.
In the mean time, we need to figure out a process to at least lock down the
testnet3 network so that no new blocks can be mined while the replacement
chain is commissioned. Is there a BIP with a procedure for replacing
testnet? How was it done last time?
-Ali
On Sunday, April 28, 2024 at 2:06:01 PM UTC Matt Corallo wrote:
It has always been very clearly communicated that if testnet starts being
valued or traded it will
be reset. There's some legitimate debate over parameters in a reset here,
but in the mean time
testnet3 has ceased to serve its intended purpose as a valueless test
platform. Thus, it should at
minimum be removed.
On 3/31/24 9:19 AM, Jameson Lopp wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to open a discussion about testnet3 to put out some feelers on
potential changes to it.
> First, a few facts:
>
> 1. Testnet3 has been running for 13 years. It's on block 2.5 million
something and the block reward
> is down to ~0.014 TBTC, so mining is not doing a great job at
distributing testnet coins any more.
>
> 2. The reason the block height is insanely high is due to a rather
amusing edge case bug that causes
> the difficulty to regularly get reset to 1, which causes a bit of havoc.
If you want a deep dive
> into the quirk:
https://blog.lopp.net/the-block-storms-of-bitcoins-testnet/
> <https://blog.lopp.net/the-block-storms-of-bitcoins-testnet/>
>
> 3. Testnet3 is being actively used for scammy airdrops; those of us who
tend to be generous with our
> testnet coins are getting hounded by non-developers chasing cheap gains.
>
> 4. As a result, TBTC is being actively bought and sold; one could argue
that the fundamental
> principle of testnet coins having no value has been broken.
>
> This leads me to ponder the following questions, for which I'm soliciting
feedback.
>
> 1. Should we plan for a reset of testnet? If so, given how long it has
been since the last reset and
> how many production systems will need to be updated, would a reset need
to be done with a great deal
> of notice?
>
> 2. Is there interest in fixing the difficulty reset bug? It should be a
one liner fix, and I'd argue
> it could be done sooner rather than later, and orthogonal to the network
reset question. Would such
> a change, which would technically be a hard fork (but also arguably a
self resolving fork due to the
> difficulty dynamics) necessitate a BIP or could we just YOLO it?
>
> 3. Is all of the above a waste of time and we should instead deprecate
testnet in favor of signet?
>
> - Jameson
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-05-04 0:04 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 40+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-03-31 13:19 Jameson Lopp
2024-03-31 14:33 ` Luke Dashjr
2024-03-31 14:57 ` Jameson Lopp
2024-03-31 17:21 ` Eric Voskuil
2024-04-09 18:28 ` Garlo Nicon
2024-03-31 16:02 ` Peter Todd
2024-03-31 21:01 ` Nagaev Boris
2024-03-31 21:29 ` Peter Todd
2024-04-01 12:54 ` Jameson Lopp
2024-04-01 13:37 ` Pieter Wuille
2024-04-01 14:20 ` Andrew Poelstra
2024-04-01 22:01 ` 'Fabian' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2024-04-02 11:53 ` Jameson Lopp
2024-04-02 18:36 ` Lukáš Kráľ
2024-04-02 19:46 ` Jameson Lopp
2024-04-03 4:19 ` Anthony Towns
2024-04-03 18:18 ` emsit
2024-04-03 19:35 ` Andrew Poelstra
2024-04-30 18:46 ` Matthew Bagazinski
2024-05-01 15:30 ` Garlo Nicon
2024-05-04 17:13 ` Peter Todd
2024-04-10 6:57 ` Garlo Nicon
2024-04-22 4:33 ` Ali Sherief
2024-04-01 13:25 ` Andrew Poelstra
2024-04-01 13:32 ` 'Fabian' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2024-04-01 14:28 ` Warren Togami
2024-04-01 19:22 ` [bitcoindev] " emsit
2024-04-04 8:14 ` Calvin Kim
2024-04-04 12:47 ` Jameson Lopp
2024-04-05 4:30 ` Calvin Kim
2024-04-06 23:04 ` David A. Harding
2024-04-09 16:48 ` Peter Todd
2024-04-16 17:30 ` [bitcoindev] " 'Sjors Provoost' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2024-04-07 7:20 ` [bitcoindev] " Christian Decker
2024-04-07 8:09 ` K Calvin
2024-04-08 19:11 ` Garlo Nicon
2024-04-09 4:29 ` coinableS
2024-04-28 13:45 ` [bitcoindev] " Matt Corallo
2024-05-02 7:10 ` Ali Sherief [this message]
2024-05-04 17:08 ` Peter Todd
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