Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Barry Silbert segwit agreement

From: Hampus Sjöberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 11:23:22 +0200

I'm really happy to see people trying to cooperate to get SegWit activated.
But I'm really unsure about the technicalities about Silbert's proposal.

If we're going to do a hardfork, it makes most sense to assist Johnson in
his spoonnet/forcenet proposals.
Just doing a simple 2MB without fixing anything else is very uninteresting,
and a hardfork without addressing replay protection seems really
unprofessional to me.
And proposing a hardfork in 4 months in the future, is completely insane.
You cannot expect a 100% of all nodes in P2P network to upgrade in 4 months.

I think it's much better to activate BIP141 ASAP, and then hardfork to 2MB
September 2018, or 2019 (together with forcenet/spoonnet).
And if not, BIP148 is gaining momentum once again so that sounds much more
interesting.

Hampus

2017-05-22 8:12 GMT+02:00 shaolinfry via bitcoin-dev <
[email-masked]>:

> Someone sent me a copy of the Barry Silbert agreement, an agreement forged
> between a select number of participants https://pastebin.com/VuCYteJh
>
> Participants agree to immediately activate Segwit, however, under a
> different activation proposal. Since I have spent the last few months
> researching various activation strategies of the current BIP141 deployment,
> as well as redeployment, I feel I am quite well placed to comment on the
> technicalities.
>
> To be clear, the proposal as far as I can see does not activate BIP141,
> but is a completely new deployment which would be incompatible with the
> BIP141 deployment. I'm not sure how that can be considered "immediate"
> activation. Surely immediate activation would just be for miners to start
> signalling and segwit would be activated in 4-5 weeks. The proposal seems
> to require a lower 80% threshold, I assume because they were unable to
> convince 95% of the hashpower to go trigger activation.
>
> There are a few options to activating segwit now, the first being for 95%
> of hashrate to signal. The second is for the community to deploy BIP148
> UASF which will force miners to signal segwit. Being a UASF it is date
> triggered. The third option is a redeployment of segwit on a new bit, but
> requires waiting for the existing deployment to time out, because all the
> p2p messages and service bits related to segwit must be replaced too (which
> is what BIP149 does).
>
> A fourth option, first suggested to me by James Hilliard, was to make
> BIP148 miner triggered (MASF) with a lower threshold, above 50%. I coded
> this up a few weeks ago https://github.com/bitcoin/
> bitcoin/compare/master...shaolinfry:segsignal but didnt get around to
> posting to the ML yet. This effectively lowers the threshold from 95% to
> 65% as coded, or could be upped to 80% or whatever was preferable.
>
> I think this removes the primary risk of BIP148 causing the creation of
> two chains, and gives an improved chance to get segwit activated quickly
> (assuming a majority of miners wish to go this route). But hash a primary
> disadvantage of still leaving the activation in the hands of miners. If it
> doesn't work out, then BIP149 can then be used as proposed, but it'll be
> even safer because we'll have futher guaged support.
>
> References:
>
> SEGSIGNAL: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/compare/master...
> shaolinfry:segsignal
> BIP148: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0148.mediawiki
> BIP149: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0149.mediawiki
>
> I think the Barry Silbert agreement is very ill considered, and clearly
> lacking peer review from the technical community. Suggestions of a HF in 4
> months are completely unrealistic and without technical merits. But more
> importantly, closed door agreements between selected participants is not
> how to garner consensus to change a $30bn decentralized system. The purpose
> of my email is to try and assist in the "immediate activation of segwit"
> which only requires hashrate to participate; and to provide some techincal
> input since I have done a great deal of research and development into the
> topic.
>
> Given the history we've already passed the point where we should be
> expecting miners to cooperate in lowering their own fee income with a
> capacity increase; but we should be open to all reasonable options in the
> interest in moving things forward in a safe and collaborative way.
>
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