MEETING_NOTES.txt

March 23rd 2021 Taproot Activation Meeting Notes.


We had a very productive meeting today. Here is a summary of the meeting -- I've done my best to
summarize in an unbiased way.

1. On the use of a speedy trial variant:

- There are no new objections to speedy trial generally.
- There is desire to know if Rusty retracts or reaffirms his NACK in light of the responses.
- There is an open question of if Rusty's NACK remains if it is sufficiently addressed.
- There is no desire to wait for Rusty's response if he does not respond (but please don't leave us in suspense).


2. Selecting between heights and MTP:

- There is not robust consensus on either
- There are two NACKs, one (luke-jr) against MTP, one (jeremyrubin) against height. More on this in
  agenda item 5.
- No one has an issue with the technical safety of MTP/heights on their own.
- There is an open question of the additional review required to ensure height based activation is
  safe.

3. Parameter Selection

- There is broad agreement that we should target something like a May 1st release, with 1 week from rc1
  starttime/startheight, and 3 months + delta stoptime/stopheight (6 retargetting periods), and an
  activation time of around Nov 15th.
- If we select heights, it looks like the first signalling period would be 683424, the stop height
  would be 695520.
- If we select times, we should target a mid-period MTP. We can shift this closer to release, but
  currently it looks like a 1300 UTC May 7th start time and stop time would be 1300 UTC August 13th.
- The activation height should be 707616 (about Nov 15th) for either proposal.

(please check my math, if anyone is superstitious we can add a day to times...)

4. Parameter Flexibility

- We may wish to adjust the schedule a little bit -- either back 1 signal, or up 1 signal.
- There's concurrence that regardless of pushing the start or stop dates, we should hold the
  November 15th date steady as slipping past Thanksgiving turns to Christmas turns to New Years
  turns to Chinese New Year and we're looking at March as the next date people would want to
  schedule.
- There's concurrence that as long as we're getting to a release sometime in May (with a very strong
  preference for Mid-May as opposed to End of May) that we don't need to re-evaluate. There's
  limited belief that we could stretch this into June if needed.
- There's belief that we should be able to get a release with ST Taproot on the timeline suggested
  by topic 3.

5. Simultaneous UASF

- luke-jr believes that a UASF BIP8 client must be able to release before the ST client releases in
  order for people to use it
- no one else in attendance seemed to share this sentiment, a UASF can proceed independently of ST.
- BIP8 UASF is compatible with a MTP based ST by selecting whatever height the ST MTP started at
  (and a stop height farther in the future with LOT).
- luke-jr NACK of ST MTP: ST with MTP means that UASF must release after ST releases, which limits
  UASF adoption.
- jeremyrubin NACK of ST Height: if using height means that we'd see a marketed push to launch a
  UASF client before ST is given a chance, ST fails its goal for avoiding contentious forks.

If we select times, we should target a mid-period MTP. We can shift this closer to release, but
currently it looks like a 1300 UTC May 7th start time and stop time would be 1300 UTC August 13th.

May 7 is special for me (Personal)

(please check my math, if anyone is superstitious we can add a day to times...)

They can follow a different calendar in which today's date is: March 389th, 2020

I don't think we're going to change anything for a personal reason -- some people really are superstitious about Friday the 13th though!

Yeah. I couldn't stop myself mention about it May 7. Dont care if start time is anything +- 10 days. I hate superstitions especially about calendars because I have seen people following multiple in my lifetime here in India. So it was a sarcasm with a link sipa shared on twitter recently.