[Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Jeff Garzik]

Once a supermajority (95%) of mining reaches block version 2,
nVersion==1 blocks will be rejected.  This event seems likely to occur
in the next week.

Version 2 block specification: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0034

Watching for the event: http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/top.php  The text
is at the bottom:
"We are currently at 100 out of the latest 1000 blocks on version 1
(10.00%) and 899 out of the latest 1000 blocks on version 2 (89.90%)"

Users should not be impacted.  Some ancient miners will produce
newly-invalid blocks (v1), that will get ignored.  The easy solution
is to mine using a recent bitcoind (0.7 or later).  If you are a miner
and need help upgrading to v2, ping us on #bitcoin-dev or
bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti.com

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Luke-Jr]

On Saturday, March 23, 2013 4:16:19 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Users should not be impacted.  Some ancient miners will produce
> newly-invalid blocks (v1), that will get ignored.  The easy solution
> is to mine using a recent bitcoind (0.7 or later).  If you are a miner
> and need help upgrading to v2, ping us on #bitcoin-dev or
> bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net.

I don't think anyone is mining using bitcoind 0.7 or later? Deepbit is the 
only pool I know of using bitcoind at all, and it's based on 0.3.21 (or about 
that)...

p2pool has supported v2 blocks since 2012 Aug 8.
Eloipool has supported v2 blocks since 2012 Sep 1.
slush's stratum server has supported v2 blocks since it was written.

I'm not aware of any other maintained open source poolservers.
At least PoolServerJ and ecoinpool are known to break when v2 blocks become 
mandatory.

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Jeff Garzik]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
> I don't think anyone is mining using bitcoind 0.7 or later?

slush, BTC Guild, ozcoin too I think, several others.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti.com

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Luke-Jr]

On Saturday, March 23, 2013 5:28:55 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
> > I don't think anyone is mining using bitcoind 0.7 or later?
> 
> slush, BTC Guild, ozcoin too I think, several others.

Not for producing coinbases (where BIP 34 is implemented).

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Jeff Garzik]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 1:43 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
> On Saturday, March 23, 2013 5:28:55 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
>> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
>> > I don't think anyone is mining using bitcoind 0.7 or later?
>>
>> slush, BTC Guild, ozcoin too I think, several others.
>
> Not for producing coinbases (where BIP 34 is implemented).

Sure, that is largely the pool server layer.  But it is misleading to
imply that bitcoind is nowhere in the stack.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti.com

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Luke-Jr]

On Saturday, March 23, 2013 5:47:46 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 1:43 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
> > On Saturday, March 23, 2013 5:28:55 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
> >> > I don't think anyone is mining using bitcoind 0.7 or later?
> >> 
> >> slush, BTC Guild, ozcoin too I think, several others.
> > 
> > Not for producing coinbases (where BIP 34 is implemented).
> 
> Sure, that is largely the pool server layer.  But it is misleading to
> imply that bitcoind is nowhere in the stack.

Context is everything.
bitcoind is nowhere in the implementation of the miner end of BIP 34.

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Jeff Garzik]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
> bitcoind is nowhere in the implementation of the miner end of BIP 34.

Again, not strictly true.

bitcoind's 'getblocktemplate' RPC call used by some supplies the block
version, selects transactions for the miner, and other tasks integral
to the implementation of the miner and BIP 34.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti.com

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Luke-Jr]

On Saturday, March 23, 2013 6:21:32 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
> > bitcoind is nowhere in the implementation of the miner end of BIP 34.
> 
> Again, not strictly true.
> 
> bitcoind's 'getblocktemplate' RPC call used by some supplies the block
> version, selects transactions for the miner, and other tasks integral
> to the implementation of the miner and BIP 34.

Transaction selection and everything else bitcoind does, is irrelevant to BIP 
34. It is incompatible with getblocktemplate for coinbase-creating software to 
produce v2 blocks without implementing BIP 34 themselves, even if the upstream 
GBT server specifies it.

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Upcoming network event: block v2 lock-in

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 10:47 AM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 1:43 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
>> Not for producing coinbases (where BIP 34 is implemented).
> Sure, that is largely the pool server layer.  But it is misleading to
> imply that bitcoind is nowhere in the stack.

You're both right: BIP34's addition of the height is implemented in
the coinbase generator, so for almost everyone the Bitcoind version is
not very relevant for that.  Rejection of invalid chains, however, is
in the Bitcoin daemon.  Upgrading bitcoind alone should be sufficient
to prevent the creation of forks, though if miners would like to avoid
losing income they must update _both_ so that they don't create
invalid blocks or mine on invalid forks.