Soft-forks on Bitcoin

2023-08-17T13:28

A traditional soft-fork activation plays out like this:

  • someone makes a proposal
  • if half-dozen respected Core developers like that, they implement it and talk about it
  • everybody loves the idea
  • they ship it in Bitcoin Core
  • miners turn it onA traditional soft-fork activation plays out like this:

A traditional soft-fork failure plays out like this:

  • someone makes a proposal
  • if half-dozen respected Core developers do not care much about the idea, they don’t do anything
  • people fight on Twitter about the merits of the idea forever

A sidechain activation within BIP-300 plays out like this:

  • someone writes the sidechain software
  • if a bunch of people are interested in that, they start playing with it in test mode
  • if it is really good people launch a proposal to miners
  • miners vote yes or no
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