Re: [bitcoin-dev] March 23rd 2021 Taproot Activation Meeting Notes

From: Claus Ehrenberg <aubergemediale@gmail•com>
To: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp•com.au>,
	 Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] March 23rd 2021 Taproot Activation Meeting Notes
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 15:42:01 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANPykMr_pyz7XxrXo2FfkNPmBwzMkmnL2SPw8-TmVhOtxkz=-A@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87pmz6it7q.fsf@rustcorp.com.au>

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As a user, I think it's very important for me to know if Taproot is
eventually coming or not. So why not make it so that if _either_ miners
_or_ users decide for Taproot, it will activate no matter what. Accepting a
chain split is imo the fairest way to 'resolve the conflict' (it can't be
resolved anyway).

That would probably mean running ST and and UASF concurrently.

The upside would be that we've got a safe date for Taproot, except neither
users nor miners want it.

Cheers,
Claus

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 7:02 AM Rusty Russell via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Ryan Grant <bitcoin-dev@rgrant•org> writes:
> > On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 11:58 PM Rusty Russell via bitcoin-dev
> > <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> >> The core question always was: what do we do if miners fail to activate?
> >>
> >> [...]  Speedy Trial takes the approach that "let's pretend we didn't
> >> *actually* ask [miners]".
> >
> > What ST is saying is that a strategy of avoiding unnecessary risk is
> > stronger than a strategy of brinkmanship when brinkmanship wasn't
> > our only option.  Having deescalation in the strategy toolkit makes
> > Bitcoin stronger.
>
> I don't believe that having a plan is brinkmanship or an escalation.
>
> During the segwit debate, Pieter Wuille said that users should decide.
> I've been thinking about that a lot, especially about what that means in
> a practical sense where the normal developer / miner dynamic has failed.
>
> >> It's totally a political approach, to avoid facing the awkward question.
> >> Since I believe that such prevaricating makes a future crisis less
> >> predictable, I am forced to conclude that it makes bitcoin less robust.
> >
> > LOT=true does face the awkward question, but there are downsides:
> >
> >   - in the requirement to drop blocks from apathetic miners (although
> >     as Luke-Jr pointed out in a previous reply on this list they have
> >     no contract under which to raise a complaint); and
>
> Surely, yes.  If the users of bitcoin decide blocks are invalid, they're
> invalid.  With a year's warning, and developer and user consensus
> against them, I think we've reached the limits of acceptable miner
> apathy.
>
> >   - in the risk of a chain split, should gauging economic majority
> >     support - which there is zero intrinsic tooling for - go poorly.
>
> Agreed that we should definitely do better here: in practice people
> would rely on third party explorers for information on the other side of
> the split.  Tracking the cumulative work on invalid chains would be a
> good idea for bitcoind in general (AJ suggested this, IIRC).
>
> >> Personally, I think the compromise position is using LOT=false and
> >> having those such as Luke and myself continue working on a LOT=true
> >> branch for future consideration.  It's less than optimal, but I
> >> appreciate that people want Taproot activated more than they want
> >> the groundwork future upgrades.
> >
> > Another way of viewing the current situation is that should
> > brinkmanship be necessary, then better tooling to resolve a situation
> > that requires brinkmanship will be invaluable.  But:
> >
> >   - we do not need to normalize brinkmanship;
> >
> >   - designing brinkmanship tooling well before the next crisis does
> >     not require selecting conveniently completed host features to
> >     strap the tooling onto for testing; and
>
> Again, openly creating a contingency plan is not brinkmanship, it's
> normal.  I know that considering these scenarios is uncomfortable; I
> avoid conflict myself!  But I feel obliged to face this as a real
> possibility.
>
> I think we should be normalizing the understanding that bitcoin users
> are the ultimate decider.  By offering *all* of them the tools to do so
> we show this isn't lip-service, but something that businesses and
> everyone else in the ecosystem should consider.
>
> >   - it's already the case that a UASF branch can be prepared along
> >     with ST (ie. without requiring LOT=false), although the code is a
> >     bit more complex and the appropriate stopheight a few blocks later.
>
> I don't believe this is true, unless you UASF before ST expires?  ST is
> explicitly designed *not* to give time to conclude that miners are
> stalling (unless something has changed from the initial 3 month
> proposal?).
>
> > Although your NACK is well explained, for the reasons above I am
> > prepared to run code that overrides it.
>
> Good.  In the end, we're all at the whim of the economic majority.
>
> Cheers!
> Rusty.
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