From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org>
To: Olaoluwa Osuntokun <laolu32@gmail•com>,
Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Ordinals BIP PR
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 22:11:50 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <ZTrkJrqzBB0e9dXB@petertodd.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAO3Pvs_uUtCfhayU=3LCtpNGtkcDr=H0AM65bhNJcTMuBzWn_w@mail.gmail.com>
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On Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 03:56:55PM -0700, Olaoluwa Osuntokun via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> TL;DR: let's just use an automated system to assign BIP numbers, so we can
> spend time on more impactful things.
Yes, an easy way to do that is to use a mathematical function, like SHA256(<bip contents>)
or Pubkey(<bip author controlled secret key>).
Of course, that's also silly, as we might as well use URLs at that point...
> IIUC, one the primary roles of the dedicated BIP maintainers is just to hand
> out BIP numbers for documents. Supposedly with this privilege, the BIP
> maintainer is able to tastefully assign related BIPs to consecutive numbers,
> and also reserve certain BIP number ranges for broad categories, like 3xx
> for p2p changes (just an example).
>
> To my knowledge, the methodology for such BIP number selection isn't
> published anywhere, and is mostly arbitrary. As motioned in this thread,
> some perceive this manual process as a gatekeeping mechanism, and often
> ascribe favoritism as the reason why PR X got a number immediately, but PR Y
> has waited N months w/o an answer.
>
> Every few years we go through an episode where someone is rightfully upset
> that they haven't been assigned a BIP number after following the requisite
> process. Most recently, another BIP maintainer was appointed, with the hope
> that the second maintainer would help to alleviate some of the subjective
> load of the position. Fast forward to this email thread, and it doesn't
> seem like adding more BIP maintainers will actually help with the issue of
> BIP number assignment.
>
> Instead, what if we just removed the subjective human element from the
> process, and switched to using PR numbers to assign BIPs? Now instead of
> attempting to track down a BIP maintainer at the end of a potentially
> involved review+iteration period, PRs are assigned BIP numbers as soon as
> they're opened and we have one less thing to bikeshed and gatekeep.
>
> One down side of this is that assuming the policy is adopted, we'll sorta
> sky rocket the BIP number space. At the time of writing of this email, the
> next PR number looks to be 1508. That doesn't seem like a big deal to me,
> but we could offset that by some value, starting at the highest currently
> manually assigned BIP number. BIP numbers would no longer always be
> contiguous, but that's sort of already the case.
>
> There's also the matter of related BIPs, like the segwit series (BIPs 141,
> 142, 143, 144, and 145). For these, we can use a suffix scheme to indicate
> the BIP lineage. So if BIP 141 was the first PR, then BIP 142 was opened
> later, the OP can declare the BIP 142 is BIP 141.2 or BIP 141-2. I don't
> think it would be too difficult to find a workable scheme.
At that point, why are we bothering with numbers at all? If BIP #'s aren't
memorable, what is their purpose? Why not just let people publish ideas on
their own web pages and figure out what we're going to call those ideas on a
case-by-case basis.
All this gets back to my original point: a functioning BIP system is
*inherently* centralized and involves human gatekeepers who inevitably have to
apply standards to approve BIPs. You can't avoid this as long as you want a BIP
system.
--
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-10-26 22:11 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-10-21 5:38 Casey Rodarmor
2023-10-23 13:45 ` Andrew Poelstra
2023-10-23 15:35 ` Peter Todd
2023-10-23 16:32 ` Tim Ruffing
2023-10-26 22:05 ` Peter Todd
2023-10-23 17:43 ` Andrew Poelstra
2023-10-23 18:29 ` Luke Dashjr
2023-10-24 1:28 ` alicexbt
2023-10-24 22:56 ` Olaoluwa Osuntokun
2023-10-24 23:08 ` Christopher Allen
2023-10-25 0:15 ` Luke Dashjr
2023-10-26 22:11 ` Peter Todd [this message]
2023-10-27 9:39 ` Alexander F. Moser
2023-10-27 17:05 ` alicexbt
2023-11-09 2:15 ` Casey Rodarmor
2023-11-09 22:32 ` Claus Ehrenberg
2023-10-23 14:57 Léo Haf
2023-10-23 17:26 ` Ryan Breen
2023-11-20 22:20 vjudeu
2023-11-21 12:13 ` Kostas Karasavvas
2023-11-21 23:10 vjudeu
2023-11-22 11:27 ` Kostas Karasavvas
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