Hard-Fork Upgrades Wish List

Development Ecosystem Development
15

  • One thing I’d like to see with hard fork, is the DAA to become something that can be altered via soft-fork in future. Either miner votes can adjust parameters, or better yet, miners supermajority can replace DAA totally via soft fork. I have a feeling this is not possible. But, IMO it would be a good idea to explore, with the goal of better future-proofing network and prevention of future hard forks.

  • Another Idea is to introduce a CRITICAL function that reduces block number required before activation of foundational changes (forks). This activation period occurs after EIPs have successfully been approved by a supermajority of miners. If, and only if the EIP is clearly categorized CRITICAL, either in text body or is designated CRITICAL in title by placing a label in proposal title. Like, EIP-0037-CRITICAL.

Below are the values currently, enforced as system constants, which prompted this suggestion:

System constants:

Voting epoch length = 1024 blocks.

Voting epochs per foundational change = 32

Voting epochs before approved foundational change activation = 128

Or instead of introducing an optional CRITICAL designation, each EIP could specify activation details from a small group of preset choices. For instance-

Activation period (# of voting epochs): CRITICAL=16, RAPID=64, STANDARD= 128

The reason is obvious if you calculate the activation period in place. As currently enforced, foundational changes take 131072 blocks to be activated.

With optimal block times, that’s roughly 182 days. With high block times averaging 10 mins, that’s roughly 910 days before activation. After being approved by supermajority (>90%) of miners!

This is concerning when facing emergency situations that need fast resolution. The current DAA situation isn’t the only time the network could face such emergency scenarios in future, and we need to make changes to activation period to better prepare us for those possible scenarios.

Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts in this area.

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