bitcoin-bips/bip-uaversionbits.mediawiki

<pre>
  BIP: ?
  Title: Version bits extension with guaranteed lock-in
  Author: Shaolin Fry <shaolinfry@protonmail.ch>
  Comments-Summary: No comments yet.
  Comments-URI: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/wiki/Comments:BIP-????
  Status: Draft
  Type: Informational
  Created: 2017-02-01
  License: BSD-3-Clause
           CC0-1.0
</pre>

==Abstract==

This document specifies an extension to [[bip-0009.mediawiki|BIP9]] that introduces an additional activation parameter to guarantee activation of backward-compatible changes (further called "soft forks").

==Motivation==

BIP9 introduced a mechanism for doing parallel soft forking deployments based on repurposing the block nVersion field. Activation is dependent on near unanimous hashrate signalling which may be impractical and is also subject to veto by a small minority of non-signalling hashrate.

This specification provides a way to optionally guarantee lock-in at the end of the [[bip-0009.mediawiki|BIP9]] timeout, and therefore activation, while still allowing a hashrate super majority to trigger activation earlier.

==Specification==

This specification adds a new per-chain deployment parameter to the existing [[bip-0009.mediawiki|BIP9]] specification as follows:

# The '''lockinontimeout''' boolean if set to true, will transition state to '''LOCKED_IN''' at timeout if not already '''LOCKED_IN''' or '''ACTIVE'''.

===State transitions===

<img src="bip-uaversionbits/states.png" align="middle"></img>

The state transition workflow is exactly the same as in [[bip-0009.mediawiki|BIP9]] with an additional rule: During the STARTED state if the '''lockinontimeout''' is set to true, the state will transition to LOCKED_IN when '''timeout''' is reached.

        case STARTED:
            // BIP9 specification follows
            if (GetMedianTimePast(block.parent) >= timeout) {
                return (fLockInOnTimeout == true) ? THRESHOLD_LOCKED_IN : THRESHOLD_FAILED
            }
            int count = 0;
            walk = block;
            for (i = 0; i < 2016; i++) {
                walk = walk.parent;
                if (walk.nVersion & 0xE0000000 == 0x20000000 && (walk.nVersion >> bit) & 1 == 1) {
                    count++;
                }
            }
            if (count >= threshold) {
                return LOCKED_IN;
            }
            return STARTED;

=== Reference implementation ===

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/compare/master...shaolinfry:bip-uaversionbits

==Deployments==

A living list of deployment proposals can be found [[bip-0009/assignments.mediawiki|here]].

==References==

[[bip-0009.mediawiki|BIP9]]

[https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-February/013643.html Mailing list discussion]

==Copyright==

This document is dual licensed as BSD 3-clause, and Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.