Subject: [bitcoin-dev] UASF (LOT=true) kick off meeting - Tuesday March 2nd 19:00 UTC on ##uasf IRC channel

From: Michael Folkson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2021 17:47:57 +0000

It is approximately 8 months since Steve Lee formally kicked off the
Taproot activation discussion by setting up the ##taproot-activation
IRC channel. Obviously there was discussion that considerably predates
that but that was the first recognition that there needed to be a
focus towards a solution rather than endless circular debates.

Eight months on it appears there are some who think there is a
philosopher’s stone still out there that will garner 100 percent
consensus and contain zero chain split risk in the worst case
scenario. A philosopher’s stone that us mere mortals have failed to
find in these 8 months.

While I would be delighted if this philosopher’s stone is found (and
all are free to continue looking) I think it is prudent at this point
to step away from the circular arguments and build on the progress we
have made in these last 8 months. We have effectively achieved
overwhelming consensus on the activation mechanism (BIP 8) and all of
the parameters apart from one (lockinontimeout or LOT). Again I’d like
to thank the people who have put hours of work into getting to this
point. It is thankless work and it is probably the last thing any of
us want to be doing.

At this point it is unclear whether Bitcoin Core will be able to
release any activation code whatsoever due to disagreement logjams.
Personally I hope they do but again it is prudent to prepare for the
scenario where Core is unable to. Hence I and others have assessed
that our energies are better spent working on a community release
implementing LOT=true in a similar spirit to 2017’s UASF effort. I say
similar as this time there really is no need for any antagonism.
Approximately 90 percent of mining pools (taprootactivation.com) have
declared support and there is overwhelming community consensus to
activate Taproot. In the absence of a Core release with activation
code I hope and expect all users (including miners) to consider
supporting this UASF release and consider running it to activate
Taproot.

TL;DR Tomorrow (Tuesday) we are holding a kick off meeting for this
UASF (LOT=true) effort on the ##uasf IRC channel at 19:00 UTC. Please
consider attending and supporting this effort to get Taproot
activated. It would be great to get users from the 2017 effort
involved in addition to recent Taproot proponents from all parts of
our community. The future of Bitcoin’s scalability and privacy depends
on, as it always has, on you the user.

-- 
Michael Folkson
Email: [email-masked]
Keybase: michaelfolkson
PGP: 43ED C999 9F85 1D40 EAF4 9835 92D6 0159 214C FEE3