Activation Options

[deutschbitte]

I deleted the other sections but maybe it makes sense to create new "chapters" with the transcript for them in them so when I do get around to editing they're already there and set up how you want them.

[Sjors]

@deutschbitte indeed let's keep them around. I might move some of those transcripts around myself. In newer episodes we mostly discuss existing deployment options in more detail. So it could make sense to split those transcripts and use them to expand the sections for each deployment option.

I also want to preserve the episode QR codes. We can move them to the most relevant activation option section.

[Sjors]

I moved a few things around, and am thinking of the following narrative arch:

• Early days: unilateral soft forks by Satoshi, mostly for security fixes
• Explain mechanics (majority hash power enforces tightening of rules)
• Explain signaling (BIP 9), mention first success, second success but with drama (SegWit)
• Explain SegWit drama, and BIP 148 / 91 (for more juicy details, we already mentioned the Blockchain Wars book)
• Explain how this drama (re)opened a Pandora's box of debating too many different activation mechanisms
  • cover a few of those in more detail
  • cover BIP 8 with LOT=true in the most detail, since it's the most controversial
    • brief section about the LOT=true client binary that was released
  • point out that this long debate and drama slowed down deployment of a proposal which itself was not controversial (unlike SegWit)
• Explain how Speedy Trial side-stepped this debate and (thanks to sufficient signaling) just got the deployment over with
• Briefly explain what's next after deployment

If we keep that arch in mind, it's probably fine to occasionally get lost in the weeds of individual proposals.

This means we don't need the transcript for episode 40. We'll leave the QR code there and a brief episode summary.

@deutschbitte I would suggest the following process:

• read, but (mostly) don't apply my inline comments
• work out the Speedy Trial section, using bits of the episode 31 and 36 transcripts
  • ignore the LOT=true parts of those transcripts (leave as comment for later use)
• read, but (mostly) don't apply my inline comments
• work out the LOT transcript (episode 29)
• I'll go through the LOT=true client (episode 31 and 36) transcript; we should only need a few bits of it
• go through the whole chapter

I might prune some of the transcript today to get of duplication and tangents that I don't think we need here.

[Sjors]

This is the BIP 8 figure, that you can refer to from the text. LOT refers to lockinontimeout (horizontal arrow) and the corresponding MUST_SIGNAL state.

This is the Speedy Trial picture:

The book will be monochrome though.

[Sjors]

While going through the text I noticed that most of "### Playing with Parameters" also talks about mandatory signaling, which is what the LOT parameter provides (though it's fine to introduce it later). This makes me wonder if there's much original content we can extract from the episode 29, 31 and 36 chapters on the topic of LOT. But let's focus on Speedy Trial first.

Back to you.

[deutschbitte]

OK I looked at this briefly but am once again sick (cold, kid germs, hooray) so I am mostly not working today and will look at this Monday when my head is not super foggy!

[Sjors]

I had to make an intermediate merge to resolve a merge conflict. Please open a new PR when you continue. Get well soon!