### Announcing the next BU Vote: 7th May 2018 ###

[solex]

Bitcoin Unlimited members are advised that the next vote on BUIPs will be open for 5 calendar days in the window 7-11 May 2018.

The close-off date for new BUIPs is 23 April 2018 to allow the minimum two-week period for membership debate.
Proposers of existing draft BUIPs are welcome to advise that their BUIP is ready for membership vote.

The BUIPs for vote will comprise:

• Development and/or Operational BUIPs listed below:
  
  BUIP082: Opt-in Malleability Fix
  
  BUIP085: Double Spend Relaying
  
  BUIP086: bitcoincash: URI format update
  
  BUIP087: Utilization of “cash” denomination
  
  BUIP088: Double Spend Proof Creation and Forwarding
  
  BUIP089: Blockchain Engineer Services Contract

• New Members BUIP
  
  BUIP090: New Members for Election #9

Note: The vote recording and counting system on the BU website will be used.
A "### VOTE ###" thread will be created on 7 May however, this will redirect members to the voting page on the website. Ideally, the vote thread will only be for Q&A and comments about the vote process.

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VOTING FOR SELECTED BUIPS IS SET FOR 7 TO 11 MAY 2018
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[torusJKL]

@solex BUIP082: Opt-in Malleability Fix is ready from my side.

 

[solex]

Thanks for the info @torusJKL.

 

[Tom Zander]

I'm not sure how this works, would be nice if the BUIP88 is included in this vote. Please don't let it fall between the cracks !

 

[torusJKL]

@Tom Zander I'm waiting a few more days to follow the discussions and see if the wording of the BUIP needs to be changed. Afterwards I will propose it for this voting round.

From what I understand @theZerg also needs to look at it and give his approval for voting.

 

[freetrader]

From what I understand @theZerg also needs to look at it and give his approval for voting.

From where do you have this impression?

Your BUIP was submitted long enough (2 weeks or more) before the scheduled vote, it should be reviewed in time and get voted on.

If the Developer has technical objections, he can raise a counterproposal before the vote (this has actually happened in the past). The community then still gets to vote on the proposal and counterproposal.

 

[torusJKL]

I'm basing this on the comment @solex gave regarding BUIP082.

@torusJKL,
Sorry, but unfortunately, it can't be voted on yet as it needs input and approval from @theZerg, as the lead developer. Especially so, where this is a development BUIP which proposes an important functional change. So, we should use the next month or so for some rigorous debate and feedback, as you indicate also with other dev teams. This will refine the requirements. Then, the BU membership will be able to make an informed voting decision.

I note you mention the HF of November, which is a while off. The next vote will be in 6-8 weeks.

Although the BUIP was submitted in time it was not included because input and approval from the lead developer was needed.

 

[solex]

Hmm, I do apologise @torusJKL. At the time I replied assuming that there was still time for developer input. So, it could have proceeded in January.

 

[solex]

Updated OP to include list of BUIPs which are definite to proceed.

 

[AdrianX]

@Ken Shishido @solex is BUIP087 ready for the May vote?

I'd like an XCH definition to be added in case of a chain split for guidence in a situation like BTC & BCH or S1X & S2X where there is no replay protection, it could be added as a later BUIP.

The purpose would be to get institutional investors to align on a common definition when using XCH to avoid the type of confusion made by some exchanges untenable political positions calling one or the other fork BTC in the case of the S2X fork.

 

[solex]

Hi @AdrianX
I see what you mean. Do you have a paragraph in mind to add...

 

[AdrianX]

No I don't have a paragraph in mind maybe some BU members could get that ball rolling.

It comes down to, how is Bitcoin Cash defined? More over without replay protection which fork is Bitcoin Cash in the event of a contentious chain split . How should an exchange or ETF deal with the situation?

Before deploying the ticker it would be good to have everyone who uses it understand how it is intended to be assigned in the case of a chain split. i.e. Which fork gets the ticker, what requirements should be met to continue using the ticker as the official Bitcoin Cash ticker. I'm only thinking primitively given I suspect S2X failed because exchanges and ETF's weren't sure which fork was going to be called BTC and everyone wanted to avoid a catastrophe.

Exchanges and ETF's carry a lot of weight here and as we saw with S2X they can abuse that influence effectively blocking the upgrade by refusing to follow the most PoW chain, or by following some other definition of Bitcoin Cash.

If I recall @Zangelbert Bingledack, @Roger_Murdock and @awemany had some very refined ideas regarding which fork would be the BTC fork at the time of the S2X fork. Obviously a replay protection hard fork is a non issue. It's forks without replay protection that are to be considered along with the new DAA.

I don't think voting on this BUIP should be delayed. If BUIP087 goes through as is I'll propose a separate BUIP after some consultation with the community .

 

[solex]

BUIP087 added to list for the upcoming vote.

Personally, I don't like to keep thinking about further persistent forks, for the reason that forking a coin is easy in theory, but in practice should only be done as a last resort when the community is polarized into two groups, with no likelihood of finding a middle-ground. SegWit2x was the last possible middle-ground to the 1MB base block size limit problem, yet that solution was disliked by both sides of the scaling debate, so it sunk.

The upside to forking is user choice, but the downside is a dramatic cliff-edge to network effect growth which takes a very long time to recover. Disagreements over op codes (for example) are very small compared to the difference between on-chain and off-chain scaling paths. So, I really hope that no other major issue comes up which people think is worth splitting the community and blockchain again.

I do agree that a subsequent BUIP after consultation with the community is always a viable option.

 

[freetrader]

It comes down to, how is Bitcoin Cash defined?

You'll find this is just as difficult as defining Bitcoin, which Gavin spent a few blog posts on.

Appears easy in theory, but then in practice someone will come up with something that escapes your definition, if they really want to.

But for all intents and purposes, I think Gavin's initial proposal to define Bitcoin as the chain from genesis block with most accumulated SHA256d work did quite well. Bitcoin Cash could be similarly defined, just adding in the most recent upgrade block, e.g. Nov 13 (or May 15 once that has rolled past).

I had to include SHA256d above because we haven't well tracked real expended joules which would probably work better even over a change of PoW (not that that seems on the cards at the moment).

 

[AdrianX]

Appears easy in theory, but then in practice someone will come up with something that escapes your definition, if they really want to.

Yes I agree, I was thinking of building on Gavin's definition with the addition of some market directed initiatives like a futures market that accurately allows markets to price in the "controversial spiting upgrade" a guide as to how to go about defining the XCH ticker. I agree with @solex small difference between groups are a non issue, possibly a definition would be abused by the political process so maybe a bad idea.

 

[torusJKL]

The issue with Gavin's definition is that you can only measure which chain has the most proof of work after the fact.

In the mean time the ecosystem might give one or the other chain the old name which will give it an advantage over the other chain with the new name.

This advantage could lead to more value at the exchanges for the chain with the old name and thus more proof of work.
Maybe kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.