[BIP-119] Clarify that policy is not validity + what a covenant is. #1278

pull JeremyRubin wants to merge 2 commits into bitcoin:master from JeremyRubin:patch-6 changing 1 files +20 −15

JeremyRubin commented at 9:46 AM on January 26, 2022: contributor

@luke-jr these are intended to address your nits on the mailing lists; will work on the more detailed responses later.
[BIP-119] Clarify that policy is not validity + what a covenant is. 9eb17cd296
[BIP-119] Make it abundantly clear that policy and standard are recommendations. 5901e7079b
in bip-0119.mediawiki:717 in 9eb17cd296 outdated
```
 712 | @@ -710,8 +713,8 @@ for an OP_NOP are a soft fork, so existing software will be fully functional wit
 713 |  for mining and block validation. Similar soft forks for OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY and OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY
 714 |  (see BIP-0065 and BIP-0112) have similarly changed OP_NOP semantics without introducing compatibility issues.
 715 |  
 716 | -In contrast to previous forks, OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY will not make scripts
 717 | -valid for policy until the new rule is active.
 718 | +In contrast to previous forks, OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY's implementation does not allow transactions with spending
 719 | +scripts using it to be accepted to the mempool or relayed under standard policy until the new rule is active.
```
luke-jr commented at 9:18 PM on January 26, 2022:

Policy is a node decision and cannot be mandated...

JeremyRubin commented at 10:25 PM on January 26, 2022:

i don't think i said mandated?

what would you specifically reword it as?

JeremyRubin commented at 10:25 PM on January 26, 2022:

it's clear that it's only under standard policy, not any other policy one might use

luke-jr commented at 10:28 PM on January 26, 2022:

As a recommendation.

Policy is not a topic for standardization generally.

JeremyRubin commented at 11:20 PM on January 26, 2022:

Other BIPs absolutely do discuss introducing new standard output types or script types and standardness rules for them.

Policy very likely should be a topic for BIPs, given that prior activations have had mild bugs with respect to what they permit in the mempool pre-activation.

I agree that in theory there could be BIPs that become final and are "upgraded" to Bitcoin Protocol Consensus Documents, but then there should also be things like Bitcoin Implementation Notes that have things like standardness rules and their importance. E.g., widely adopted standardness rules are relied on to prevent DoS attacks (altho not in this BIP in particular).

I can add language to say "recommended".
JeremyRubin commented at 9:12 PM on March 23, 2022: contributor

please merge?
luke-jr merged this on Mar 23, 2022
luke-jr closed this on Mar 23, 2022
kingcathy23 approved

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