From: Calvin Kim <ccychc@gmail•com>
To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [bitcoindev] Re: The Future of Bitcoin Testnet
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2024 01:14:21 -0700 (PDT) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <950b875a-e430-4bd8-870d-f9a9fab2493an@googlegroups.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CADL_X_eXjbRFROuJU0b336vPVy5Q2RJvhcx64NSNPH-3fDCUfw@mail.gmail.com>
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Throwing myself into the conversation because I think there's other devs
that use testnet like I do.
I mainly use testnet for checking if the utreexod implementation I'm
building runs into consensus
bugs due to the havoc of how testnet creates bursts of blocks and how it
reorganizes itself. I find
the unpredictability a feature.
> 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.
For my usage I never really see this as a problem since signet already
provides that usecase. While
I can empathize with devs struggling to get coins, there's always signet
for the usecase of testing
scripts/wallets. Signet doesn't really provide the same feature for my
usecase.
> 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/
I stated this above but I find this as a feature.
> 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.
Could I get links/sources for this? I'm curious as to how big of a problem
this is.
> 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.
Same for this. Would appreciate links/evidence.
> 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?
I lean towards no unless the problem with testnet coins being valued is too
significant.
> 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?
Again, I'd lean towards keeping it the same.
> 3. Is all of the above a waste of time and we should instead deprecate
testnet in favor of signet?
No as signet doesn't have the features I find valuable in testnet.
Best,
Calvin
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-04-04 8:29 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 40+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-03-31 13:19 [bitcoindev] " 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 [this message]
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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