Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP 2 promotion to Final

From: Mustafa Al-Bassam <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 16:28:43 +0000

On 10/03/16 15:59, Jorge Timón wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 10, 2016 16:51, "Mustafa Al-Bassam via bitcoin-dev"
> <[email-masked]
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
> > I think in general this sounds like a good definition for a hard-fork
> > becoming active. But I can envision a situation where someone will try
> > to be annoying about it and point to one instance of one buyer and one
> > seller using the blockchain to buy and sell from each other, or set
> one up.
>
> And all the attacker will achieve is preventing a field on a text file
> on github from moving from "active" to "final".
> Seems pretty stupid. Why would an attacker care so much about this? Is
> there any way the attacker can make gains or harm bitcoin with this
> attack?
>
It's extremely naive to think that just because you can't think of an
incentive for a reason for an attack to do this, an attacker will never
to do this. There are many people that would be willing to spend some
time to cause some trouble for the enjoyment of it, if the attack is
free to execute.

The fact that it takes very little time and effort to prevent a BIP from
reaching final status, means that in an base of millions of users it's
guaranteed that some disgruntled or bored person out there will attack
it, even if it's for the lulz.

To reasonably expect that any hark fork - including an uncontroversial
one - will be adapted by every single person in a ecosystem of millions
of people, is wishful thinking and the BIP may as well say "hard fork
BIPs shall never reach final status."