Re: [bitcoin-dev] Flag day activation of segwit

[David Vorick <david.vorick@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2226 bytes --]

It has taken almost 6 months for SegWit adoption to get to where it is
today. I don't think it will take that long to reach similar adoption for
UASF SegWit, but conservatively we want to give it at least that much time.

It's really important to stress here that a UASF will split and become the
minority chain if a majority of the transaction accepting nodes on the
network do not agree to strictly follow the UASF and outright reject blocks
that do not signal for SegWit at the designated date.

Before setting a flag day, I think we should get written cooperation
agreements from the largest economic players in Bitcoin. This would include:

Bitfinex
Bitflyer
BitGo
BitPay
Bitstamp
Blockchain.info
Blockcypher
Coinbase
Huobi
Kraken
Gemeni
OkCoin
Poloniex

(feel free to discuss this list)

100% cooperation is not necessary, but close to 100% cooperation is
strongly desired. It should be noted that their cooperation is only
required because they are sufficiently powerful to threaten the success of
a UASF, particularly because many of these entities hold users bitcoins.

Once a convincing majority is on-board, I suggest we release a UASF patch
that activates a full year after release. This is because a UASF is a big
gamble that requires a large majority of the economy has upgraded.

Though that is a very long time, SegWit can always be activated early with
miner cooperation.

------

As an extra note, if the UASF triggers with majority economy support and
the miners resist, a minority block reward chain may be the longest chain
for a while. However, when the majority block reward chain does catch up,
the minority reward chain will be entirely obliterated, eliminating all
block rewards, all transaction history, and making a ton of money vanish
all at once.

This makes it very dangerous for an exchange, payment processor, online
wallet, or miner to oppose the UASF if there is significant momentum behind
it. This gives the UASF a powerful snowball effect once a few major parties
(or the majority of tiny full nodes) have decided to commit to the UASF.

On the other hand, failure means a permanent coin split, so it is still
necessary to exercise caution that exceeds the caution of a normal soft
fork.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3737 bytes --]