From: Luke Dashjr <luke@dashjr.org>
To: Tomas <tomas@tomasvdw.nl>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 23:47:16 +0000
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Cc: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] [BIP Draft] Decentralized Improvement Proposals
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On Wednesday, December 30, 2015 6:22:59 PM Tomas wrote:
> > The specification itself looks like an inefficient and bloaty reinvention
> > of version bits.
> 
> The actual assignment of version bits isn't clear from the
> specification. Are you saying that any implementation that wants to
> propose a change is encouraged to pick a free version bit and use it?

That should probably be clarified in the BIP, I agree. Perhaps it ought to be 
assigned the same as BIP numbers themselves, by the BIP editor? (Although as a 
limited resource, maybe that's not the best solution.)

> Furthermore, my proposal addresses the danger of forward-incompatible
> changes; a hard-fork can no longer occur as every implementation will
> agree on the active the set of rules even if it has not implemented
> them. This seems to be lacking in the version bits proposal.

I don't think that's possible. First of all, a hardfork can always occur, 
since this is something done by the economy and not (even possibly opposed to) 
miners. Furthermore, consider the change affecting how further rule changes 
are made, such as a PoW algorithm change.

Luke