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From: Luke Dashjr <luke@dashjr•org>
To: Jameson Lopp <jameson.lopp@gmail•com>, bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] The Future of Bitcoin Testnet
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:33:22 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <8c6e98ff-bdec-4955-8132-bd93af2d40dd@dashjr.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CADL_X_eXjbRFROuJU0b336vPVy5Q2RJvhcx64NSNPH-3fDCUfw@mail.gmail.com>

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Is the difficulty reset bug actually a bug, or a feature?

If it's a bug, couldn't we just fix it and let the blockchain reorg on 
its own?

Signet is definitely not a replacement for testnet.

Luke


On 3/31/24 09:19, 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/
>
> 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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  reply	other threads:[~2024-03-31 16:24 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 [this message]
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
2024-05-04 17:08     ` Peter Todd

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