Delivery-date: Wed, 03 Apr 2024 22:33:12 -0700
Sender: bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of aj@erisian.com.au designates 172.104.61.193 as permitted sender) client-ip=172.104.61.193;
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2024 15:00:28 +1000
From: Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>
To: Pieter Wuille <bitcoin-dev@wuille.net>
Cc: bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] Time for an update to BIP2?
Message-ID: <Zg4z7P+MKzEfCkdM@erisian.com.au>
References: <e4048607-64b7-4772-b74e-4566a4b50bc0n@googlegroups.com>
 <9288df7b-f2e9-4106-b843-c1ff8f8a62a3@dashjr.org>
 <42e6c1d1d39d811e2fe7c4c5ce6e09c705bd3dbb.camel@timruffing.de>
 <d1e7183c-30e6-4f1a-8fd6-cddc46f129a2n@googlegroups.com>
 <52a0d792-d99f-4360-ba34-0b12de183fef@murch.one>
 <f9435999-42df-46b5-86e2-7ba0336a9bf2@mattcorallo.com>
 <ZgWRu32FXzqqg69V@console>
 <9ebd08b0-7680-4896-aad3-1c225b764bcb@mattcorallo.com>
 <59fa94cea6f70e02b1ce0da07ae230670730171c.camel@timruffing.de>
 <4pVUOTuyyAbTJB_rTGNWS_TuR39NS5OoJvaSCyqjezAg265kPnCjXvqohFmWQ5ITb7XFZCJie-uV1AG3pVCI5H54dDuFP4OyomC9yiWDot0=@wuille.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <4pVUOTuyyAbTJB_rTGNWS_TuR39NS5OoJvaSCyqjezAg265kPnCjXvqohFmWQ5ITb7XFZCJie-uV1AG3pVCI5H54dDuFP4OyomC9yiWDot0=@wuille.net>
X-Spam_score: 0.0
X-Spam_bar: /
X-Original-Sender: aj@erisian.com.au
X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com;       spf=pass
 (google.com: domain of aj@erisian.com.au designates 172.104.61.193 as
 permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=aj@erisian.com.au
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Precedence: list
Mailing-list: list bitcoindev@googlegroups.com; contact bitcoindev+owners@googlegroups.com
List-ID: <bitcoindev.googlegroups.com>
X-Google-Group-Id: 786775582512
List-Post: <https://groups.google.com/group/bitcoindev/post>, <mailto:bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
List-Help: <https://groups.google.com/support/>, <mailto:bitcoindev+help@googlegroups.com>
List-Archive: <https://groups.google.com/group/bitcoindev
List-Subscribe: <https://groups.google.com/group/bitcoindev/subscribe>, <mailto:bitcoindev+subscribe@googlegroups.com>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:googlegroups-manage+786775582512+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com>,
 <https://groups.google.com/group/bitcoindev/subscribe>
X-Spam-Score: -0.8 (/)

On Wed, Apr 03, 2024 at 07:44:00PM +0000, Pieter Wuille wrote:
> - Scope: related to technology that supports the bitcoin currency.

> This last one may be controversial, but I feel that some of the discussio=
n the past months about the process has shown that there is unclarity/disag=
reement here, and it would be good to have some guideline written out here.=
 I think scope will inevitably be somewhat of a grey zone, but I feel some =
limits (whether spelled out or not) will exist regardless (nobody would con=
sider including the HTTP spec in scope for a BIP, I think?).

> I also don't think scope should be tied to specific technologies (e.g. it=
 shouldn't just be about on-chain transactions, as e.g. that would exclude =
address formats), but if not that, what scoping is useful? And to me, restr=
icting to technology that supports the bitcoin currency is fairly clear, re=
asonable, and avoids a circular definition. As an example, that would exclu=
de OpenTimestamps from scope (which was suggested in https://lists.linuxfou=
ndation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-October/022077.html). I see that as =
an unrelated application which happens to make use of the Bitcoin blockchai=
n, which on itself is one of the technologies that supports bitcoin - but i=
s an indirection too far to be in scope.

For BINANA I phrased that as "proposals only being rejected if they are
... unrelated to Bitcoin", on the basis that deciding some BIP/BIN is
dumb and ignoring it wastes a lot less time than arguing about whether
it's a good thing for the monetary properties of Bitcoin (which is what
I'm interested in helping people work on).

For example, would adding script opcodes whose only purpose is to better
support moving BTC to/from sidechains like Liquid or WBTC on Eth, where
they can be used as collateral in market makers for trading other tokens
count as "supporting the bitcoin currency"? This might include such
things like Drivechains (BIP 300, 301), eg. Is such a feature more about
supporting asset trading, or is anything that involves buying/selling
things with Bitcoin count as supporting bitcoin as a currency?

Does it make a difference that a script opcode would be consensus
critical? Another way of allowing trading between BTC and other assets is
the "Taproot Assets" proposal (BIPs PR#1489), which anchor trades between
BTC and tokenized assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, but don't require
consensus changes. If the BIPS repo includes docs on Drivechains, is
excluding proposals about Taproot Assets or RGB or similar that valuable?

Those all seems arguable to me; but why force people to have those
arguments over making up a number and hosting a document in a git repo?

> > * The Comments-URI thing is outdated and everyone seems to ignore it.
> > Comments-Summary is even weirder.
> Agreed. It's unused, and sometimes misinterpreted. I think we should get =
rid of it.

For BINANA I added a "Discussion" header where the BIN author can point to
locations where discussion has/can take place -- it seemed like a useful
thing to have beyond just links in the "rationale", both for researching
background into the proposals development, and as a pointer to somewhere
people can leave additional feedback. I don't think there's much value in
having a dedicated discussion area in the BINANA/BIP repo itself though.

> > * "Informational BIPs do not necessarily represent a Bitcoin community
> > consensus or recommendation". Aha, does this imply that Standards
> > Track BIPs need to represent a Bitcoin community consensus or
> > recommendation?
> Indeed. I don't think BIPs should be representing community consensus or =
recommendations. But perhaps they can document individual pieces of evidenc=
e of acceptance; see further?

Documenting consensus change activation seems useful if nothing else,
eg as in BIP 90.

> > * Ever tried to write pseudocode or LaTeX in mediawiki format? It's
> > more than annoying, believe me.
> I'd like permitting BIPs to be written in markdown.

This is already permitted, see https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/1504

> Some forms of Status are useful I think, but they ought to reflect the au=
thor's intent, not the community's perception. E.g. "Draft", "Proposed", an=
d "Withdrawn" make sense to me for any kind of standard. In Draft stage mor=
e substantial changes could be permitted, but would convey the idea isn't y=
et intended for adoption. Of course, the BIP1 status fields weren't really =
used, and the BIP2 status fields don't seem to be doing much better. If we =
assume that BIP3 status fields aren't going to be used either this is all f=
or nought, but perhaps it's still worth trying with a significantly simplif=
ied assortment of statuses.
>=20
> Things like "Active / Final" and "Rejected" relate to community acceptanc=
e, and I agree those don't belong in BIPs.

I think "Proposed" is much more related to community acceptance than
"Active" -- you can reasonably say something is "Active" once a single
implementation has a released version that actively supports it, for
example; but describing a standard as "Proposed" seems to be pretty
clearly trying to achieve so form of community acceptance? Who else
would you be proposing it to?

I'd look at the lifecycle more as something like:

 * Draft: author expects further changes, don't deploy this
 * Proposed: author is hoping for multiple implementations to adopt this;
    author thinks it's complete, but there may be objections and it may
    need to go back to Draft state to resolve those objections
 * Active: one or more implementations have deployed this feature as
    specced. changes will usually be specified in a new proposal/standard.
    acceptable changes might be fixing ambiguities, adding extra rationale
    or test cases, etc.
 * Withdrawn: no current implementations support this, author doesn't
    think it should be adopted, author isn't planning on making further
    changes to it

For comparison, BINANA currently has BINs marked Draft, Active and Info:
https://github.com/bitcoin-inquisition/binana

(Note that adding a consensus change in inquisition and doing a heretical
activation of that change on signet would still leave the spec in "Draft"
-- further changes are expected)

(As far as BIP 2's list goes, I think Deferred should just be Draft;
Rejected/Obsolete should just be Withdrawn; Final should just be Active;
and Replaced should either be Withdrawn or Active depending on whether
the replacement is backwards compatible, accompanied by Superseded-By)

> As far as judging consensus goes, perhaps actual consensus changes are an=
 exception? I feel that for those, an "Accepted" status may actually make s=
ense, because they actually require the ecosystem to have agreement about.

How about BIP 148 or BIP 91? I think it's fair to call both of those
"Active" and would have been fair to mark them Active sometime in
April-July 2017 -- that doesn't mean there was necessarily community
consensus behind them: merely that there was software implementing
those standards active on the network, and that if someone wanted to do
something similar but different, that would warrant being a different
standard. If it had turned out there wasn't consensus behind either
proposal, and no one was mining a blockchain that those implementations
would accept, at most that would warrant the author marking the BIPs as
"Withdrawn" IMO.

The same argument applies to BIP 343 I think. I believe only one
implementation adopted it [0], and I don't believe any actively maintained
software implements that BIP as written, but if you did implement it
you'd continue to track the bitcoin blockchain, so I think it would
be fair to have marked that BIP as "Active" once it was adopted by an
implementation, and to have left it marked that way.

[0] "Bitcoin Core-based Taproot Client" which doesn't even seem to exist
    in web.archive.org.
    https://github.com/BitcoinActivation/BitcoinTaproot.org/blob/master/tap=
root.html

If the segwit2x fork had ever had a written spec, I likewise think it
would have been appropriate for it to be a BIP, perhaps being marked as
Proposed on 2017-07-01 [1], Active on 2017-07-22 [2], and Withdrawn on
either 2017-11-08 [3] or 2019-10-09 (when the btc1/bitcoin github repo
was marked as archived).

[1] https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/pull/50
[2] https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/releases/tag/v1.14.5
[3] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-Novem=
ber/000685.html

Cheers,
aj

--=20
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "=
Bitcoin Development Mailing List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an e=
mail to bitcoindev+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/=
bitcoindev/Zg4z7P%2BMKzEfCkdM%40erisian.com.au.