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From: "Lukáš Kráľ" <emsit@emsit•sk>
To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] The Future of Bitcoin Testnet
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2024 11:36:44 -0700 (PDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <c1e32072-55ff-4cca-a56c-09c747e7e4a6n@googlegroups.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CADL_X_dR1ENC9jm76azf_dkbJdeSCSBbPEpTkm71s4i-g_g=WA@mail.gmail.com>


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I think people will be very reluctant to give up testnet3, including 
myself. I've been running a testnet3 faucet for 10 years, distributing 
327197.44 tBTC via the faucet + a few thousand outside the faucet. 
Resetting the testnet will mean the end for my faucet because I won't be 
mining new coins anymore. People who have testnet3 will have to find a new 
way to obtain testnet4.

Are there any official rules for when a testnet reset will occur? If I 
understand correctly, it's being considered because of the "price" and the 
low mining reward? When testnet4 launches and starts trading in a month, 
will testnet5 be launched shortly after...?

I would focus more on how to keep it invaluable and easily accessible to 
developers. I would definitely leave the transitional phase for at least a 
year, and the BTC client should have parameters for both -testnet3 and 
-testnet4. Personally, *I think the adoption of testnet4 will be very slow*.

Dátum: utorok 2. apríla 2024, čas: 14:00:40 UTC+2, odosielateľ: Jameson Lopp

> I think Andrew's difficulty rule suggestions are the least invasive and 
> make sense for fixing the block storm issue while keeping the code changes 
> to the logic that is already conditional to testnet. Though even with those 
> rules I think it would still be possible, though far less likely, for the 
> difficulty to get permanently reset very low unless we also implement the 
> difficulty adjustment patch Fabian mentioned.
>
> I suspect that creating a "fair" faucet is an unsolvable problem: the only 
> robust way to gate free giveaways (much like airdrops) is to impose an 
> economic cost on claiming them, which is against the spirit of testnet.
>
> As emsit and I both noted, 13 years without a reset means that it would be 
> courteous to give testnet operators a reasonably long heads up to prepare. 
> Perhaps 6 months or 1 year lead time?
>
> On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 6:06 PM 'Fabian' via Bitcoin Development Mailing 
> List <bitco...@googlegroups•com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> removing the special rule and moving to a reduced block interval sounds 
>> like a good and simple solution.
>>
>> Another idea: Keep the current exception logic and adapt the difficulty 
>> adjustment code (`CalculateNextWorkRequired`) to look for the last block 
>> that didn't have difficulty 1 and use that block's difficulty as the basis 
>> for the new difficulty calculation. It seemed like the most intuitive fix 
>> to me when I looked at the code after reading Jameson's first email (see 
>> https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/29775/commits/9913549637706749f0af5d326f949bd652cbd5f8
>> ).
>>
>> Best,
>> Fabian
>>
>>
>>
>> On Monday, April 1st, 2024 at 4:20 PM, Andrew Poelstra <
>> apoe...@wpsoftware•net> wrote:
>>
>> > On Mon, Apr 01, 2024 at 01:37:59PM +0000, Pieter Wuille wrote:
>> > 
>> > > As for using other measures to prevent too large difficulty 
>> variations... I'm not sure that's desirable, because it always cuts both 
>> ways (nicely demonstrated by the "allow difficulty 1 rule" on testnet3 
>> backfiring and enabling block storms!). For applications that actually need 
>> very predictable block rate, there is signet. For others, just the normal 
>> mainnet rules are probably not too terrible. I would be ok with having a 
>> somewhat reduced block interval (say a few days instead of 2 weeks) if 
>> that's not deemed to complex to implement across the ecosystem, but I don't 
>> think it's that important.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > I really like this. For my part (rust-bitcoin) this would be as simple
>> > as adding an extra parameter to my blockparams structure. Possibly one
>> > already exists, I'd have to check.
>> > 
>> > This would be much easier than the existing situation where we have
>> > special-case logic for testnet the difficulty-1 target.
>> > 
>> > It would also limit the amount of bikeshedding possible, since there
>> > aren't too many conflicting goals regarding the retargeting window...
>> > unlike tweaking the existing logic where there's a tradeoff between
>> > "we should make this never happen" and "it should happen often enough
>> > that it doesn't break people's code" and "it should happen if blocks
>> > slow down to like, 1/50th their normal rate even if they are still
>> > technically being produced" and "it shouldn't be possible to trigger
>> > it within the 2-hour timestamp-faking window" etc. And questions
>> > about whether we should fix/redesign the interaction between the reset
>> > rule and the normal difficulty retarget.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > OTOH, since we already have the special logic, I'd also be happy with
>> > tweaking the existing rule. My specific proposal (after reading 
>> Jameson's
>> > post, which has some nice graphs of difficulty) would be
>> > 
>> > * increase the reset threshold from 20 minutes to 6 hours, which is
>> > (a) well outside the 2-hour window in which miners can easily fake
>> > timestamps, and (b) will basically never be hit by accident
>> > * increase the reset difficulty from 1 to 1MM, which is an rough lower
>> > bound on the "normal" testnet difficulty seen historically
>> > 
>> > Which puts us in the "this rule would never be triggered unless
>> > literally everyone stopped mining" corner of the design space.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > --
>> > Andrew Poelstra
>> > Director of Research, Blockstream
>> > Email: apoelstra at wpsoftware.net
>> > Web: https://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew
>> > 
>> > The sun is always shining in space
>> > -Justin Lewis-Webster
>> > 
>> > --
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>> > To view this discussion on the web visit 
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bitcoindev/ZgrCxWxMkiAt2Tg2%40camus.
>>
>> -- 
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> To view this discussion on the web visit 
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bitcoindev/06oL-GctrcLb99M_RuOgygXKMjtB_vPLHOCuc-axYrGVy_QBRGPu5wA9C2QXDb7cKIJbJu_t_JKmRrr9FsBORdUPavXPFvOi98p04UQuvuE%3D%40protonmail.com
>> .
>>
>

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  reply	other threads:[~2024-04-02 19:06 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 40+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2024-03-31 13:19 Jameson Lopp
2024-03-31 14:33 ` Luke Dashjr
2024-03-31 14:57   ` Jameson Lopp
2024-03-31 17:21     ` Eric Voskuil
2024-04-09 18:28   ` Garlo Nicon
2024-03-31 16:02 ` Peter Todd
2024-03-31 21:01   ` Nagaev Boris
2024-03-31 21:29     ` Peter Todd
2024-04-01 12:54       ` Jameson Lopp
2024-04-01 13:37         ` Pieter Wuille
2024-04-01 14:20           ` Andrew Poelstra
2024-04-01 22:01             ` 'Fabian' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2024-04-02 11:53               ` Jameson Lopp
2024-04-02 18:36                 ` Lukáš Kráľ [this message]
2024-04-02 19:46                   ` Jameson Lopp
2024-04-03  4:19           ` Anthony Towns
2024-04-03 18:18             ` emsit
2024-04-03 19:35               ` Andrew Poelstra
2024-04-30 18:46               ` Matthew Bagazinski
2024-05-01 15:30                 ` Garlo Nicon
2024-05-04 17:13                 ` Peter Todd
2024-04-10  6:57       ` Garlo Nicon
2024-04-22  4:33         ` Ali Sherief
2024-04-01 13:25 ` Andrew Poelstra
2024-04-01 13:32   ` 'Fabian' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2024-04-01 14:28 ` Warren Togami
2024-04-01 19:22 ` [bitcoindev] " emsit
2024-04-04  8:14 ` Calvin Kim
2024-04-04 12:47   ` Jameson Lopp
2024-04-05  4:30     ` Calvin Kim
2024-04-06 23:04       ` David A. Harding
2024-04-09 16:48         ` Peter Todd
2024-04-16 17:30           ` [bitcoindev] " 'Sjors Provoost' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2024-04-07  7:20   ` [bitcoindev] " Christian Decker
2024-04-07  8:09     ` K Calvin
2024-04-08 19:11 ` Garlo Nicon
2024-04-09  4:29   ` coinableS
2024-04-28 13:45 ` [bitcoindev] " Matt Corallo
2024-05-02  7:10   ` Ali Sherief
2024-05-04 17:08     ` Peter Todd

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