Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] The Future of Bitcoin Testnet

From: Pieter Wuille <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2024 13:37:59 +0000

On Monday, April 1st, 2024 at 8:54 AM, Jameson Lopp <[email-masked]> wrote:

> It sounds like folks think testnet is useful enough to continue maintaining.
> I think it's a fair point that testnet should strive to be as similar to mainnet as possible. If we fix the difficulty reset edge case then that will arguably make testnet EVEN MORE like mainnet by removing the "block storm" phenomenon.

Agreed on both points. Signet is useful, but it is probably not the right solution for everything. And testnet has been reset before, it shouldn't be a big deal to reset it again.

> Changing the supply schedule is an interesting proposal, though I'd counter that fixing the difficulty reset will naturally make the supply schedule more evenly distributed over time, plus we can hopefully move toward resetting the network before long. I'd be slightly worried about changing consensus rules on testnet that deviate significantly from mainnet because I bet there are plenty of systems running that validate that rule or make assumptions that it's the same as mainnet, and deploying such a change could cause far more grief for the developer ecosystem.

I think there is an easier alternative to changing the supply rule: the intention to reset it again when its subsidy drops too low. That may even also counteract the development of a non-zero market price for the coins.

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.

-- 
Pieter

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