Episode notes
In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss activation of the Taproot soft fork upgrade, and more specifically, the lock-in on timeout (LOT) parameter. The LOT parameter can be set to either “true” (LOT=true) or “false” (LOT=false).
LOT=false resembles how several previous soft forks were activated. Miners would have one year to coordinate Taproot activation through hash power; if and when a supermajority (probably 90 percent) of miners signal readiness for the upgrade, the soft fork will activate. But if this doesn’t happen within (probably) a year, the upgrade will expire. (After which it could be redeployed.)LOT=true also lets miners activate the soft fork through hash power, but if they fail to do this within that year, nodes will activate the soft fork regardless.Aaron and Sjors discuss the benefits and detriments of each option. This also includes some possible scenarios of what could happen if some users set LOT to true, while other users set LOT to false, and the associated risks. Finally, Aaron and Sjors discuss what they think is most likely going to happen with Taproot activation.
Chapters
00:00:00 Taproot activation and the LOT debate
00:04:47 How LOT=false and LOT=true behave
00:08:23 Miner vetoes and redeployment timing
00:12:09 Why allow an upgrade to expire?
00:15:24 Developer power, consent and precedent
00:17:24 Chain splits and the LOT=true user
00:24:02 Reorganizations for LOT=false and old nodes
00:29:05 Avoiding splits: critical mass and game theory
00:36:10 Unpopular soft forks and lasting splits
00:38:36 Which activation approach might ship?
