This week, the activation mechanism for the next major bitcoin update was added to the main Bitcoin Core cryptocurrency client. On April 15, developers Fanquake and Marco Falke approved two requests to include the Speedy Trial mechanism in the Bitcoin Core source code.
Community members, from developers to ordinary users, agree on the need for Taproot, the first major upgrade of the bitcoin network since SegWit was activated in 2017, which will bring support for Schnorr signatures and more complex transactions, as well as a positive impact on scalability and privacy.
However, not all developers support the activation method included in Bitcoin Core. The main question is who should start the update: the miners who include transactions in the blocks, or the node operators who perform their validation. In accordance with the Speedy Trial scheme, miners must launch the update. If they do not do this within the allotted three months, the node operators will have their say.
Many developers, including Jeremy Rubin, Sjors, AJ Towns, Max Hillebrand, and Michael Folkson, participated in the discussion of the Speedy Trial and approved it. Developer Luke Dashjr, who has supported the cryptocurrency since 2011, however, insists that the initiative should come from node operators. He claims that the Speedy Trial is tantamount to the BIP9 proposal, which the node operators rejected in February.
"The community has reached a consensus on BIP8. The developers ignore this and promote their own program. This is an attack on bitcoin, not very good, " he wrote.
The developer has launched a separate website, where he offers node operators to install their version of Bitcoin Core, so that the update will take place according to the scheme proposed by him. This has raised concerns about the possible division of the bitcoin network into two, if its participants use clients of different versions.
"Warning to buyers," wrote Square Crypto team member Steve Lee, with a link to the Dashjr post.
"This is not just a warning to buyers. Let's be clear: encouraging people to use an unverified fork of Bitcoin Core with different consensus rules is not only a great way to steal coins from people, but also a great way to get two different bitcoin tokens with the accompanying confusion, " said bitcoin developer Matt Corallo. "Even worse: this is another attempt by a (completely insignificant) minority to push changes to the consensus rules among everyone else and thus capture bitcoin."
Ex-curator of the site Bitcoin.org under the nickname Cobra noted: "I'm confused, what's going on? It's kind of dangerous to run different consensus rules, isn't it? I mean, now we're talking about a trillion-dollar network." Rubin added that if Dashjr is right and Speedy Trial is not supported by the community, then the update will not be massive anyway.
This is not the first time that Dashjr has taken a different position from other developers. Earlier, for example, he claimed that SegWit harms bitcoin by allowing larger blocks to pass through the network, and even suggested reducing the block size below the standard 1 MB.
Developer Ben Karman, in response to Dashjr's comments, wrote that he did not share his position, since they needed to make a decision to get off the ground, but called the work of the enemy Speedy Trial useful as a "safety net".