Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin is an experiment. Why don't we have an experimental hardfork?

From: odinn <odinn.cyberguerrilla@riseup•net>
To: "Jorge Timón" <jtimon@jtimon•cc>,
	"Danny Thorpe" <danny.thorpe@gmail•com>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin is an experiment. Why don't we have an experimental hardfork?
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 03:14:45 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <55D45715.4010107@riseup.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABm2gDp69g8H4Was2qzixPq3qwQ_smzzeFpE+y2GYEK6F4kUrw@mail.gmail.com>

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Firstly, XT is controversial, not uncontroversial;
Second, this issue has been beat to death quite a while ago
https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/pull/899#issuecomment-117
815987
Third, it poses major risks as a non-peer reviewed alt with a number
of problematic features (with the privacy problems recently mentioned
on this list being just one of them)
Fourth, it has not followed any semblance of process in terms of the
development funnel or BIPS process, with XT developers instead
choosing instead a dangerous path of hard forking bitcoin while being
well aware of miner voting on viable solutions which have followed
process.

The following proposals
http://bipsxdevs.azurewebsites.net/
regardless of what you think of any one of them, are deserving of
attention (BIP 100 / BIP 101) and are being voted on as you read this
by miners. (BIP sipa is not yet numbered, and BIP 102 is a backup
/fallback option.)  BIP 100 is probably the best of these (note, in
part, it schedules a hardfork on testnet in September).

Contentious hard forks are bad for Bitcoin.
https://bitcoin.org/en/posts/hard-fork-policy
You may want to read this again if you haven't recently.

There is no basis for further promoting XT by suggesting that it
should even be tested.

#GAVEL

On 08/19/2015 02:29 AM, Jorge Timón via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 11:06 PM, Danny Thorpe via bitcoin-dev 
> <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Ya, so?  All that means is that the experiment might reach the
>> hard fork tipping point faster than mainnet would. Verifying that
>> the network can handle such transitions, and how larger blocks
>> affect the network, is the point of testing.
>> 
>> And when I refer to testnet, I mean the public global testnet
>> blockchain, not in-house isolated networks like
>> testnet-in-a-box.
> 
> I would expect any uncontroversial hardfork to be deployed in
> testnet3 before it is deployed in bitcoin's main chain.
> 
> In any case, you can already do these tests using 
> https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6382 Note that even if the
> new testchains are regtest-like (ie cheap proof of work) you don't
> need to test them "in-a-box": you can run them from many different
> places. Rusty's test ( http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=509 ) could have
> been perfectly made using #6382, it just didn't existed at the
> time. _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev
> mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org 
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
> 

- -- 
http://abis.io ~
"a protocol concept to enable decentralization
and expansion of a giving economy, and a new social good"
https://keybase.io/odinn
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