Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Straight Flag Day (Height) Taproot Activation

From: Matt Corallo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2021 12:29:36 -0500

I think you may have misunderstood my proposal. I'm not suggesting some people run BIP 8(true), some run BIP8(false), 
and some run a client which has a flag day, I'm suggesting a flag day activation instead of any BIP8-based activation. 
Replies to your further points inline.

Matt

On 2/28/21 12:20, Luke Dashjr wrote:
> On Sunday 28 February 2021 16:45:22 Matt Corallo via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Concept NACK. This still has the same problems BIP149 would have had, as I
> just reminded in my last email to this ML:
> 
> 1) Such a chain does not indicate activation at all, leaving it unresolved and
> debatable whether activation has occurred or not.
> 2) As a result, it is also impractical to intentionally reject the softfork
> should anyone decide to do so.
> 
> Signalling is important to activation.

Several people responded disagreeing, including myself. I'll paste my response here in case you missed it:

Forced-signaling, or any form of signaling, does not materially change whether a soft fork can be seen to be safe to 
use. Pieter wrote a great post[1] some time ago that goes into depth about the security of soft forks, but, while miners 
can help to avoid the risk of forks, they aren't the determining factor in whether use of a fork should be considered 
safe (ie the fork "has activated").

Not only that, but the signaling methods used in BIP 8/9 (ie the version field in the block header) do not imply 
anything about whether mining pools are running full nodes which enforce the soft fork at all, only whether the pool has 
configured their stratum software to signal or not.

Ultimately, forced-signaling, or signaling period, are not a substitute for having a broad set of upgraded nodes across 
the network, including an overwhelming majority of economically-active nodes, enforcing the rules of a new fork. As this 
can be difficult to measure, waiting some time after a fork and examining upgrade patterns across the network is important.

[1] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/012014.html