BTC Core Dev: Miners Upgrading Network is "Attack on BTC"
2 min read
A programme that activates a major privacy upgrade for BTC is primed and ready. But it has reignited a debate about who’s allowed to press the launch button: the miners that process BTC blocks or the node operators that validate transactions.
The privacy upgrade, called Taproot, makes it harder to distinguish between different BTC transactions, such as multi-signature transactions or opening payment channels on the Lightning Network.
The programme, that launches Taproot, Speedy Trial, grants BTC miners the power to implement the upgrade within three months. If they demur, node operators will likely get to decide.
But Luke Dashjr, a prominent BTC Core developer who’s worked on the network since 2011, wants node operators to come first. He said that Speedy Trial implements a proposal called BIP 9, which node operators rejected in February.
“Community came to consensus on BIP8. These devs are IGNORING that and pushing their own agenda instead. It is an attack on BTC, not a good thing,” Dashjr fumed yesterday.
Community came to consensus on BIP8.
These devs are IGNORING that and pushing their own agenda instead.
It is an attack on BTC, not a good thing.
— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) April 15, 2021
A pseudonymous developer, BTC Mechanic, set up a website in support of Dashjr’s proposal. It encourages BTC node operators to upgrade their clients by November 12.
Fears of a potential split
But others are concerned this could cause a rift and split the network in two—with some miners upgrading their nodes via Speedy Trial and others through Dashjr’s method. This would result in two sets of nodes running two different versions of BTC.
“This is yet another attempt from a (absolutely tiny) minority of people to try to push a change to BTC’s consensus rules onto everyone else – hijacking BTC,” said former BTC developer and open source engineer at Square Crypto, Matt Corallo.
Even worse, this is yet another attempt from a (absolutely tiny) minority of people to try to push a change to BTC's consensus rules onto everyone else – hijacking BTC.
— Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt) April 16, 2021
A pseudonymous anarchist known as Cobra, who was the lead maintainer for the BTC.org website, replied to Dashjr, stating, “Yeah but it’s a bit dangerous to run different consensus rules willy-nilly isn’t it? I mean this is a trillion dollar network now.”
Dashjr replied that stagnation is even worse. He said that the community agreed on his version and it’s the core developers who are attacking BTC, not him.
