Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] how to disable segwit in my build?

From: Gregory Maxwell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2017 01:04:19 +0000

On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 6:17 AM, Dan Libby via bitcoin-dev
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Up to now, I have purposefully been running bitcoin releases prior to
> 0.13.1 as a way to avoid the (possible) segwit activation, at least
> until such time as I personally am comfortable with it.

It is not simple to do so correctly, I couldn't tell you off the top
of my head; a number of things must be changed it isn't as simple as
disabling the activiation because of the segwit P2P changes.  Nor is
it a supported configuration. Even if it were now, it wouldn't be one
we'd continue to support in the future after segwit is active, as
we're likely to drop deployment/compat code.

Can you explain why you wish to do this?  It should have absolutely no
adverse impact on you-- if you don't use segwit, you don't use it-- it
may be the case that there is some confusion about the implications
that I could clear up for you... or suggest alternatives that might
achieve your goals.

Having a node that supports it won't make it more likely to activate,
you can mine without signaling segwit even on a node that supports it.
Your own transactions will not use segwit just because your node
supports it.

Effectively the only reason I'm aware of to intentionally not run with
segwit support beyond just not having upgraded yet, is a desire to try
to temporarily have as your tip block a block that was actively
stealing the segwit transactions of a third party. Which doesn't seem
either personally or publicly desirable; but I fully admit I may be
missing some good reason which I am not aware of.