Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] The Future of Bitcoin Testnet

From: Matt Corallo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2024 09:45:54 -0400

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
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Bitcoin Development 
> Mailing List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 
> [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>.
> To view this discussion on the web visit 
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bitcoindev/CADL_X_eXjbRFROuJU0b336vPVy5Q2RJvhcx64NSNPH-3fDCUfw%40mail.gmail.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bitcoindev/CADL_X_eXjbRFROuJU0b336vPVy5Q2RJvhcx64NSNPH-3fDCUfw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Bitcoin Development Mailing List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email-masked].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bitcoindev/6a787f0d-db85-48fe-9e00-217ccd2a0f2f%40mattcorallo.com.