> Should we plan for a reset of testnet?

Surprisingly, it is a very good question. However, replacing testnet3 with testnet4, by just dropping support for the old network, should not be called "reset", but rather "abandon". So, the question is: should we mine a new Genesis Block, at height one, on top of the current Genesis Block from testnet3, and trigger the biggest possible chain reorganization, where the whole chain is reorged in a backward-compatible way?

Also I wonder, if that method of introducing testnet5, by doing it on top of testnet4's Genesis Block is worth considering. Because then, some planned changes, like entirely dropping the difficulty reset, could be potentially turned from hard-fork into just a regular soft-fork, supported by hashrate majority.

And of course, reorging everything is an edge case, that we may want to see on any testnet first, before anyone will succeed with that on the main network, if SHA-256 will ever be broken, and if re-hashing the whole chain will be needed.

poniedziałek, 31 marca 2025 o 22:41:20 UTC+2 Garlo Nicon napisał(a):
> 4. As a result, TBTC is being actively bought and sold; one could argue that the fundamental principle of testnet coins having no value has been broken.

Now, some time passed, so we can look at the history, and get some conclusions. In case of testnet4, the same thing happened. And some people consider testnets as altcoins: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5536825.0
Which means, that if new testnets will be released in a similar way, then none of them will be worthless.

niedziela, 5 maja 2024 o 15:12:08 UTC+2 Peter Todd napisał(a):
On Tue, Apr 30, 2024 at 11:46:59AM -0700, Matthew Bagazinski wrote:
>
>
> Unfortunately, the current form of Testnet is doomed to have value, just
> like BTC. Its scarcity makes it a valuable asset. And no reset will change
> that. It will only result in repeated resets, multiple versions of testnet,
> and people never learning.

The scarcity of testnet BTC isn't the only valuable asset in testnet; testnet
blockchain space itself is a scarce, valuable, asset. It's an asset that we
can't easily make worthless, even through testnet resets, as there are usecases
(including scams) where the long-term persistence of the data doesn't matter.

--
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org

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