Takeaways from the #taproot activation discussion:
1. Unanimous support for BIP8. RIP BIP 9.
2. Overwhelming consensus that 1yr is correct timeout value (it's actually defined in blocks, so 26x2016 or maybe 87600).
3. Majority consensus for lockin false, though @lukedashjr strongly opposed.
4. No decision I could see on start time, but 2 months was done for segwit, and that didn't seem too objectionable.

My opinions: BIP8 is designed to make a UASF easier, because it would activate the soft fork for non-UASF nodes.

I don't think it will come to that this time, but it's nice to have a robust method for future upgrades, too.

We use miners to co-ordinate the SF simply because they are the one group we can reliably measure without centralization. But this implies they might not co-ordinate! Last time, they did this for bad reasons, but it could also be for good ones. In particular, if a flaw or improvement were found before activation, they could kill activation.

Of course, at some point we need to commit, so you could argue an extra few months isn't worth it. But I'm conservative here.

If miners are stalling without good technical reasons at the 6 month mark, I will personally champion and run my nodes with 9 month lockin=true.

But that's making best of a bad situation. Having bitcoin ship with lockin=true feeds perception that devs de-facto control the protocol (defaults are *sticky*!). I consider that more dangerous, long term, than Taproot not activating easily.

@rusty

This is probably a ridiculous idea, but could there be an initialization script that asks the user what their preference is? A mandatory question but no default.

@georgevaccaro @rusty You could make it a required option in bitcoin.con/command line.

@pete @georgevaccaro @rusty I know you like to be a lil controversial Pete but I'm hoping bitcoin.con was a typo...

😠

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