Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposed alternatives to the 20MB step function

From: Tier Nolan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 May 2015 15:22:27 +0100

On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 3:09 PM, Tier Nolan <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Gavin Andresen <[email-masked]>
> wrote:
>
>> But if there is still no consensus among developers but the "bigger
>> blocks now" movement is successful, I'll ask for help getting big miners to
>> do the same, and use the soft-fork block version voting mechanism to
>> (hopefully) get a majority and then a super-majority willing to produce
>> bigger blocks. The purpose of that process is to prove to any doubters that
>> they'd better start supporting bigger blocks or they'll be left behind, and
>> to give them a chance to upgrade before that happens.
>>
>
> How do you define that the movement is successful?
>

Sorry again, I keep auto-sending from gmail when trying to delete.

In theory, using the "nuclear option", the block size can be increased via
soft fork.

Version 4 blocks would contain the hash of the a valid extended block in
the coinbase.

<block height> <32 byte extended hash>

To send coins to the auxiliary block, you send them to some template.

OP_P2SH_EXTENDED <scriptPubKey hash> OP_TRUE

This transaction can be spent by anyone (under the current rules).  The
soft fork would lock the transaction output unless it transferred money
from the extended block.

To unlock the transaction output, you need to include the txid of
transaction(s) in the extended block and signature(s) in the scriptSig.

The transaction output can be spent in the extended block using P2SH
against the scriptPubKey hash.

This means that people can choose to move their money to the extended
block.  It might have lower security than leaving it in the root chain.

The extended chain could use the updated script language too.

This is obviously more complex than just increasing the size though, but it
could be a fallback option if no consensus is reached.  It has the
advantage of giving people a choice.  They can move their money to the
extended chain or not, as they wish.