bitcoin-dev

BIP proposal: Generalized version bits voting (bip-genvbvoting)

BIP proposal: Generalized version bits voting (bip-genvbvoting)

Original Postby Luke Dashjr

Posted on: April 4, 2017 18:01 UTC

On April 3, 2017, a Bitcoin developer named Sancho Panza wrote about the shortcomings of BIP 9 in an email to the bitcoin-dev mailing list.

He noted that BIP 9 limits itself to backward-compatible changes, making it unsuitable for hard forks. However, others have pointed out that this is not a limitation of BIP 9 but rather an inherent feature of soft forks. BIP 9 provides a mechanism for miners to coordinate soft forks, but it is not useful for deploying hard forks.Additionally, Panza argued that the fixed 95% threshold in BIP 9 is not flexible enough to account for a "spectrum of contentiousness" and can allow small minorities to veto proposed changes, leading to stagnation. However, it should be noted that soft forks are not required to use BIP 9, and even if they do, they are not obligated to adhere to the recommended thresholds.In summary, while Panza identified certain issues with BIP 9, some argue that these problems are not unique to BIP 9 and that the limitations of soft forks are simply inherent to the technology. Additionally, soft forks are not bound to use the recommended thresholds in BIP 9.