Hey Sergio,

To clarify: my single objection is that CLTV should be a hard fork. I haven't been raising never-ending technical objections, there's only one.

I have been answering all the various reasons being brought up why I'm wrong and soft forks are awesome .... and there do seem to be a limitless number of such emails .... but on my side it's still just a single objection. If CLTV is a hard fork then I won't be objecting anymore, right?

CLTV deployment is clearly controversial. Many developers other than me have noted that hard forks are cleaner, and have other desirable properties. I'm not the only one who sees a big question mark over soft forks.

As everyone in the Bitcoin community has been clearly told that controversial changes to the consensus rules must not happen, it's clear that CLTV cannot happen in its current form.

Now I'll be frank - you are quite correct that I fully expect the Core maintainers to ignore this controversy and do CLTV as a soft fork anyway. I'm a cynic. I don't think "everyone must agree" is workable and have said so from the start. Faced with a choice of going back on their public statements or having to make changes to something they clearly want, I expect them to redefine what "real consensus" means. I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not ..... well, at least everyone will see what Gavin and I have been talking about for so many months.

But I'd rather the opcode is tweaked. There's real financial risks to a soft fork.