Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2022 14:21:06 +1000
From: Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>
To: Jorge =?iso-8859-1?Q?Tim=F3n?= <jtimon@jtimon.cc>,
 Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
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Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Speedy Trial
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On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 09:31:18AM +0100, Jorge Timón via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> > In particular, any approach that allows you to block an evil fork,
> > even when everyone else doesn't agree that it's evil, would also allow
> > an enemy of bitcoin to block a good fork, that everyone else correctly
> > recognises is good. A solution that works for an implausible hypothetical
> > and breaks when a single attacker decides to take advantage of it is
> > not a good design.
> Let's discuss those too. Feel free to point out how bip8 fails at some
> hypothetical cases speedy trial doesn't.

Any case where a flawed proposal makes it through getting activation
parameters set and released, but doesn't achieve supermajority hashpower
support is made worse by bip8/lot=true in comparison to speedy trial.

That's true both because of the "trial" part, in that activation can fail
and you can go back to the drawing board without having to get everyone
upgrade a second time, and also the "speedy" part, in that you don't
have to wait a year or more before you even know what's going to happen.

> >  0') someone has come up with a good idea (yay!)
> >  1') most of bitcoin is enthusiastically behind the idea
> >  2') an enemy of bitcoin is essentially alone in trying to stop it
> >  3') almost everyone remains enthusiastic, despite that guy's incoherent
> >      raving
> >  4') nevertheless, the enemies of bitcoin should have the power to stop
> >      the good idea
> "That guy's incoherent raving"
> "I'm just disagreeing".

Uh, you realise the above is an alternative hypothetical, and not talking
about you? I would have thought "that guy" being "an enemy of bitcoin"
made that obvious... I think you're mistaken; I don't think your emails
are incoherent ravings.

It was intended to be the simplest possible case of where someone being
able to block a change is undesirable: they're motivated by trying to
harm bitcoin, they're as far as possible from being part of some economic
majority, and they don't even have a coherent rationale to provide for
blocking the idea.

Cheers,
aj