Subject: [bitcoin-dev] activation mechanism considerations

From: John Rand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2021 23:02:14 +0000

Consensus is important for both taproot and separately for the activation
mechanism.  There are more soft-forks that Bitcoin will need, so it is
important to achieve positive progress on the activation topic also, not
get impatient and rush something ill-considered.  Not all future soft-forks
maybe as widely supported as taproot, and yet it could become existentially
critical that Bitcoin prevails in achieving a future upgrade in dramatic
circumstances, even against powerful interests counter to Bitcoin user and
investors interests.  We should treat the activation topic in a considered
way and with decorum, provide tight non-emotive reasoning devoid of
frustration and impatience.  This is a low drama and convenient time to
incrementally improve activation.  People have varied views about the
deciding factor, or even which factors resulted in segwit activating after
BIP 141 failed using BIP 9.  We do not have to solve everything in one
step, incremental improvement is good, for complex unintuitive topics, to
learn as we go - and it should not be hard to do less badly than what
transpired leading up to BIP 148 and BIP 91.  Failure to upgrade if
permanent, or demoralizing to protocol researchers could be a systemic risk
in itself as there are more upgrades Bitcoin will need.  We are not Ents
but we should use our collective ingenuity to find an incremental
improvement for activation.

John R