IMPORTANT: April 1 deadline for BIP16 support

deepceleron

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Quote from: Gavin Andresen on April 19, 2012, 02:36:55 PM

Quote from: grich on April 19, 2012, 01:46:54 PM

I have a question
Why we have "block/transaction versions" if we don't use it? There was a good moment to increment version number and later use it in such way: if Miner gets a "strange" block with increased version number -- it is a signal for him to check for new soft. We could have avoided many of lost orphaned blocks

We should have, but "we" didn't think of that in time.

I've been working on a "how to do it better next time" document:
https://gist.github.com/2355445

...so this doesn't happen: http://blockchain.info/tx-index/3618498/4005d6bea3a93fb72f006d23e2685b85069d270cb57d15f0c057ef2d5e3f78d2

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on April 19, 2012, 02:36:55 PM

I've been working on a "how to do it better next time" document:
https://gist.github.com/2355445

Nice read. Lots of good ideas/concepts.

Gavin Andresen

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Chief Scientist

Quote from: grich on April 19, 2012, 01:46:54 PM

I have a question
Why we have "block/transaction versions" if we don't use it? There was a good moment to increment version number and later use it in such way: if Miner gets a "strange" block with increased version number -- it is a signal for him to check for new soft. We could have avoided many of lost orphaned blocks

We should have, but "we" didn't think of that in time.

I've been working on a "how to do it better next time" document:
https://gist.github.com/2355445

grich

newbie

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I have a question
Why we have "block/transaction versions" if we don't use it? There was a good moment to increment version number and later use it in such way: if Miner gets a "strange" block with increased version number -- it is a signal for him to check for new soft. We could have avoided many of lost orphaned blocks

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: hazek on April 05, 2012, 10:19:53 AM

Also wrong. The majority was only needed to avoid a permanent fork.

No that isn't true.

As long as one miner continues to mine the older version the the fork will continue to exist. There is no magical number to avoid a fork when implementing a breaking change to the protocol. A super majority of miners, developers, exchanges, and merchant helps to create a smooth transistion. If all end users see balances based on the new version then the alternate version has no real relevance.

A mere majority would be horribly chaotic and damaging to Bitcoin. A worst case scenario. One either wants the change to have overwhelming support or negligible support to ensure one chain remains dominant.

A 50/50 split would be catastrophic causing double spends across the network as the two incompatible chains switched places in height. This is why a condition for moving forward with BIP16 was 70%+ support. That ensure the minority fork would rapidly fall behind and consensus remains without dispute.

hazek

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Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on April 01, 2012, 08:17:24 PM

Quote from: bitpop on April 01, 2012, 10:01:48 AM

1) Well this isn't a bug
2) It's been talked about since January
3) It's a feature that was voted on by many and needs everyone's support to work

It doesn't need everyone's support just a majority of miners. It has a supermajority of miners. The rest of miners will need to upgrade if they don't the price of their incompetence will be orphaned blocks.

Also wrong. The majority was only needed to avoid a permanent fork.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: bitpop on April 01, 2012, 10:01:48 AM

1) Well this isn't a bug
2) It's been talked about since January
3) It's a feature that was voted on by many and needs everyone's support to work

It doesn't need everyone's support just a majority of miners. It has a supermajority of miners. The rest of miners will need to upgrade if they don't the price of their incompetence will be orphaned blocks.

bitpop

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1) Well this isn't a bug
2) It's been talked about since January
3) It's a feature that was voted on by many and needs everyone's support to work

terrytibbs

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How's progress?

bitpop

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It's not totally their fault, tracking down updates and especially required updates is a pain. There will always be 10% still running 0.4 and then coming back a year later to check their miner wondering what happened..

Bitcoin desperately needs a mailing list. A locked google group that only instantly emails important updates for bitcoin, namecoin, p2pool, cgminer, etc.

finway

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Seems it's going through, smoothy.

DeepBit

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We have cookies

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on March 31, 2012, 07:41:22 PM

About 20 minutes until the deadline... I expect to hear some very loud complaining about "I wasted a bunch of time generating orphan blocks why didn't you WARN me!" in the next few days. This is not an elaborate April Fool's joke.

...or the most elaborate one :)

Gavin Andresen

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Quote from: bitcool on March 25, 2012, 08:13:51 PM

To Be(lieve) Or Not To Be, That Is The Question Cheesy

About 20 minutes until the deadline... I expect to hear some very loud complaining about "I wasted a bunch of time generating orphan blocks why didn't you WARN me!" in the next few days. This is not an elaborate April Fool's joke.

bitcool

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Live and enjoy experiments

Quote from: kokjo on March 23, 2012, 05:41:42 AM

you do know that that is a sucky date, to make important decisions on, right? no one will believe you, because they are expecting that you will lie.

To Be(lieve) Or Not To Be, That Is The Question Cheesy

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: RoadStress on March 23, 2012, 07:30:48 PM

If he doesn't see this message can he figure out that he is wasting hash power? How?

First clue will be his wallet shows block reward and then it becomes orphaned and disapears as the longer valid chain becomes dominant. While this can happen occasionally if he is building on invalid chains it will happen at much higher frequency. I would imagine it wouldn't take more than a handful of block rewards being reversed before someone investigagtes.

Then again if you have a farm (ethical or not) which generates $1M annually wouldn't you atleast lurk this forum?

RoadStress

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If he doesn't see this message can he figure out that he is wasting hash power? How?

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on March 23, 2012, 09:30:45 AM

There are two ways you might waste time hashing:
1) Put a bad BIP16 transaction in your block
2) Building on top of a bad block produced by somebody else

Yeah "mystery" miner this applies to you to. No more 700 bitcoins per day unless you upgrade.

Gavin Andresen

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Quote from: jetmine on March 23, 2012, 05:25:44 AM

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on March 22, 2012, 11:00:10 AM

Again: if you don't upgrade and are a solo miner, pool operator, or p2pool user you will almost certainly waste time hashing bad blocks after April 1.

This only applies when you include transactions generated by other people (because the old client will not be able to fully verify them).

If you think this statement is incorrect, then please elaborate (with technical details).

That statement is incorrect.

There are two ways you might waste time hashing:
1) Put a bad BIP16 transaction in your block
2) Building on top of a bad block produced by somebody else

So even if you don't include anybody else's transactions in your blocks you will still almost certainly waste some time hashing by building on top of invalid blocks produced and announced by some other lazy miner running an old version of bitcoind.

rjk

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1ngldh

Quote from: jetmine on March 23, 2012, 05:25:44 AM

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on March 22, 2012, 11:00:10 AM

Again: if you don't upgrade and are a solo miner, pool operator, or p2pool user you will almost certainly waste time hashing bad blocks after April 1.

This only applies when you include transactions generated by other people (because the old client will not be able to fully verify them).

If you think this statement is incorrect, then please elaborate (with technical details).

Why aren't you including transactions from others? Hmmm...

kokjo

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You are WRONG!

you do know that that is a sucky date, to make important decisions on, right? no one will believe you, because they are expecting that you will lie.

Topic: IMPORTANT: April 1 deadline for BIP16 support (Read 3983 times)