<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub1kak8yfezzae4wds05nj6kr0k43hv6c524tqx8qggafnqak5r2hqqyeucdz</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub1kak8yfezzae4wds05nj6kr0k43hv6c524tqx8qggafnqak5r2hqqyeucdz</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2021-02-18&#xA;📝 Original message:&#34;An activation mechanism is a consensus change like any other change, can&#xA;be contentious like any other change, and we must resolve it like any other&#xA;change. Otherwise we risk arriving at the darkest timeline.&#34;&#xA;&#xA;Who&#39;s we here?&#xA;&#xA;Release both and let the network decide.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 3:08 AM Michael Folkson via bitcoin-dev &lt;&#xA;bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&#xA;&gt; Thanks for your response Ariel. It would be useful if you responded to&#xA;&gt; specific points I have made in the mailing list post or at least quote&#xA;&gt; these ephemeral &#34;people&#34; you speak of. I don&#39;t know if you&#39;re responding to&#xA;&gt; conversation on the IRC channel or on social media etc.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; The argument comes from a naive assumption that users MUST upgrade to&#xA;&gt; the choice that is submitted into code. But in fact this isn&#39;t true and&#xA;&gt; some voices in this discussion need to be more humble about what users must&#xA;&gt; or must not run.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; I personally have never made this assumption. Of course users aren&#39;t&#xA;&gt; forced to run any particular software version, quite the opposite. Defaults&#xA;&gt; set in software versions matter though as many users won&#39;t change them.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Does no one realize that it is a very possible outcome that if LOT=true&#xA;&gt; is released there may be only a handful of people that begin running it&#xA;&gt; while everyone else delays their upgrade (with the very good reason of not&#xA;&gt; getting involved in politics) and a year later those handful of people just&#xA;&gt; become stuck at the moment of MUST_SIGNAL, unable to mine new blocks?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; It is a possible outcome but the likely outcome is that miners activate&#xA;&gt; Taproot before LOT is even relevant. I think it is prudent to prepare for&#xA;&gt; the unlikely but possible outcome that miners fail to activate and hence&#xA;&gt; have this discussion now rather than be unprepared for that eventuality. If&#xA;&gt; LOT is set to false in a software release there is the possibility (T2 in&#xA;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2021-February/018380.html)&#xA;&gt; of individuals or a proportion of the community changing LOT to true. In&#xA;&gt; that sense setting LOT=false in a software release appears to be no more&#xA;&gt; safe than LOT=true.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; The result: a wasted year of waiting and a minority of people who didn&#39;t&#xA;&gt; want to be lenient with miners by default.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; There is the (unlikely but possible) possibility of a wasted year if LOT&#xA;&gt; is set to false and miners fail to activate. I&#39;m not convinced by this&#xA;&gt; perception that LOT=true is antagonistic to miners. I actually think it&#xA;&gt; offers them clarity on what will happen over a year time period and removes&#xA;&gt; the need for coordinated or uncoordinated community UASF efforts on top of&#xA;&gt; LOT=false.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; An activation mechanism is a consensus change like any other change, can&#xA;&gt; be contentious like any other change, and we must resolve it like any other&#xA;&gt; change. Otherwise we risk arriving at the darkest timeline.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; I don&#39;t know what you are recommending here to avoid &#34;this darkest&#xA;&gt; timeline&#34;. Open discussions have occurred and are continuing and in my&#xA;&gt; mailing list post that you responded to **I recommended we propose&#xA;&gt; LOT=false be set in protocol implementations such as Bitcoin Core**. I do&#xA;&gt; think this apocalyptic language isn&#39;t particularly helpful. In an open&#xA;&gt; consensus system discussion is healthy, we should prepare for bad or worst&#xA;&gt; case scenarios in advance and doing so is not antagonistic or destructive.&#xA;&gt; Mining pools have pledged support for Taproot but we don&#39;t build secure&#xA;&gt; systems based on pledges of support, we build them to minimize trust in any&#xA;&gt; human actors. We can be grateful that people like Alejandro have worked&#xA;&gt; hard on taprootactivation.com (and this effort has informed the&#xA;&gt; discussion) without taking pledges of support as cast iron guarantees.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; TL;DR It sounds like you agree with my recommendation to set LOT=false in&#xA;&gt; protocol implementations in my email :)&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 5:43 AM Ariel Lorenzo-Luaces &lt;&#xA;&gt; arielluaces at gmail.com&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; Something what strikes me about the conversation is the emotion&#xA;&gt;&gt; surrounding the letters UASF.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; It appears as if people discuss UASF as if it&#39;s a massive tidal wave of&#xA;&gt;&gt; support that is inevitable, like we saw during segwit activation. But the&#xA;&gt;&gt; actual definition is &#34;any activation that is not a MASF&#34;.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; A UASF can consist of a single node, ten nodes, a thousand, half of all&#xA;&gt;&gt; nodes, all business&#39; nodes, or even all the non mining nodes. On another&#xA;&gt;&gt; dimension it can have zero mining support, 51% support, 49% support, or any&#xA;&gt;&gt; support right up against a miner activation threshold.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; Hell a UASF doesn&#39;t even need code or even a single node running as long&#xA;&gt;&gt; as it exists as a possibility in people&#39;s minds.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; The only thing a UASF doesn&#39;t have is miner support above an agreed&#xA;&gt;&gt; activation threshold (some number above %51).&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; I say this because it strikes me when people say that they are for&#xA;&gt;&gt; LOT=true with the logic that since a UASF is guaranteed to happen then it&#39;s&#xA;&gt;&gt; better to just make it default from the beginning. Words like coordination&#xA;&gt;&gt; and safety are sometimes sprinkled into the argument.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; The argument comes from a naive assumption that users MUST upgrade to the&#xA;&gt;&gt; choice that is submitted into code. But in fact this isn&#39;t true and some&#xA;&gt;&gt; voices in this discussion need to be more humble about what users must or&#xA;&gt;&gt; must not run.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; Does no one realize that it is a very possible outcome that if LOT=true&#xA;&gt;&gt; is released there may be only a handful of people that begin running it&#xA;&gt;&gt; while everyone else delays their upgrade (with the very good reason of not&#xA;&gt;&gt; getting involved in politics) and a year later those handful of people just&#xA;&gt;&gt; become stuck at the moment of MUST_SIGNAL, unable to mine new blocks? Or&#xA;&gt;&gt; attracting a minority of miners, activating, and forking off into a&#xA;&gt;&gt; minority fork. Then a lot=false could be started that ends up activating&#xA;&gt;&gt; the feature now that the stubborn option has ran its course.&#xA;&gt;&gt; The result: a wasted year of waiting and a minority of people who didn&#39;t&#xA;&gt;&gt; want to be lenient with miners by default. The chains could be called&#xA;&gt;&gt; BitcoinLenient and BitcoinStubborn.&#xA;&gt;&gt; How is that strictly safer or more coordinated?&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; I may be in the minority, or maybe a silent majority, or maybe a majority&#xA;&gt;&gt; that just hasn&#39;t considered this as a choice but honestly if there is&#xA;&gt;&gt; contention about whether we&#39;re going to be stubborn or lenient with miners&#xA;&gt;&gt; for Taproot and in the future then I prefer to just not activate anything&#xA;&gt;&gt; at all. I&#39;m fine for calling bitcoin ossified, accepting that segwit is&#xA;&gt;&gt; Bitcoin&#39;s last network upgrade. Taproot is amazing but no new feature is&#xA;&gt;&gt; worth a network split down the middle.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; Maybe in 10 or 20 years, when other blockchains implement features like&#xA;&gt;&gt; Taproot and many more, we will become envious enough to put aside our&#xA;&gt;&gt; differences on how to behave towards miners and finally activate Taproot.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; An activation mechanism is a consensus change like any other change, can&#xA;&gt;&gt; be contentious like any other change, and we must resolve it like any other&#xA;&gt;&gt; change. Otherwise we risk arriving at the darkest timeline.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; Cheers&#xA;&gt;&gt; Ariel Lorenzo-Luaces&#xA;&gt;&gt; On Feb 17, 2021, at 7:05 AM, Michael Folkson via bitcoin-dev &lt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Yesterday (February 16th) we held a second meeting on Taproot&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; activation on IRC which again was open to all. Despite what appeared&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; to be majority support for LOT=false over LOT=true in the first&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; meeting I (and others) thought the arguments had not been explored in&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; depth and that we should have a follow up meeting almost entirely&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; focused on whether LOT (lockinontimeout) should be set to true or&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; false.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; The meeting was announced here:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2021-February/018380.html&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; In that mailing list post I outlined the arguments for LOT=true (T1 to&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; T6) and arguments for LOT=false (F1 to F6) in their strongest form I&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; could. David Harding responded with an additional argument for&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; LOT=false (F7) here:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2021-February/018415.html&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; These meetings are very challenging given they are open to all, you&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; don’t know who will attend and you don’t know most people’s views in&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; advance. I tried to give time for both the LOT=true arguments and the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; LOT=false arguments to be discussed as I knew there was support for&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; both. We only tried evaluating which had more support and which had&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; more strong opposition towards the end of the meeting.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; The conversation log is here:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; http://gnusha.org/taproot-activation/2021-02-16.log&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; (If you are so inclined you can watch a video of the meeting here.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Thanks to the YouTube account “Bitcoin” for setting up the livestream:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpl5q1ovMLM)&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; A summary of the meeting was provided by Luke Dashjr on Mastodon here:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; https://bitcoinhackers.org/@lukedashjr/105742918779234566&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Today&#39;s #Bitcoin #Taproot meeting was IMO largely unproductive, but we&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; did manage to come to consensus on everything but LockinOnTimeout.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Activation height range: 693504-745920&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; MASF threshold: 1815/2016 blocks (90%)&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Keep in mind only ~100 people showed for the meetings, hardly&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; representative of the entire community.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; So, these details remain JUST a proposal for now.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; It seems inevitable that there won&#39;t be consensus on LOT.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Everyone will have to choose for himself. :/&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Personally I agree with most of this. I agree that there wasn’t&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; overwhelming consensus for either LOT=true or LOT=false. However, from&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; my perspective there was clearly more strong opposition (what would&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; usually be deemed a NACK in Bitcoin Core review terminology) from&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Bitcoin Core contributors, Lightning developers and other community&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; members against LOT=true than there was for LOT=false. Andrew Chow&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; tried to summarize views from the meeting in this analysis:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; https://gist.github.com/achow101/3e179501290abb7049de198d46894c7c&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; I am also aware of other current and previous Bitcoin Core&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; contributors and Lightning developers who didn’t attend the meeting in&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; person who are opposed to LOT=true. I don’t want to put them in the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; spotlight for no reason but if you go through the conversation logs of&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; not only the meeting but the weeks of discussion prior to this meeting&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; you will see their views evaluated on the ##taproot-activation&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; channel. In addition, on taprootactivation.com some mining pools&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; expressed a preference for lot=false though I don’t know how strong&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; that preference was.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; I am only one voice but it is my current assessment that if we are to&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; attempt to finalize Taproot activation parameters and propose them to&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; the community at this time our only option is to propose LOT=false.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Any further delay appears to me counterproductive in our collective&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; aim to get the Taproot soft fork activated as early as possible.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Obviously others are free to disagree with that assessment and&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; continue discussions but personally I will be attempting to avoid&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; those discussions unless prominent new information comes to light or&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; various specific individuals change their minds.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Next week we are planning a code review of the Bitcoin Core PR #19573&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; which was initially delayed because of this LOT discussion. As I’ve&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; said previously that will be loosely following the format of the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Bitcoin Core PR review club and will be lower level and more&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; technical. That is planned for Tuesday February 23rd at 19:00 UTC on&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; the IRC channel ##taproot-activation.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Thanks to the meeting participants (and those who joined the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; discussion on the channel prior and post the meeting) for engaging&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; productively and in good faith.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; --&#xA;&gt; Michael Folkson&#xA;&gt; Email: michaelfolkson at gmail.com&#xA;&gt; Keybase: michaelfolkson&#xA;&gt; PGP: 43ED C999 9F85 1D40 EAF4 9835 92D6 0159 214C FEE3&#xA;&gt; _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt; bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&gt;&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20210218/ff91bcfb/attachment-0001.html&gt;</html></oembed>