This episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado” is about Speedy Trial, the proposed Taproot activation mechanism that has been gaining traction in recent weeks.
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In this episode of “The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado,” hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discussed Speedy Trial, the proposed Taproot activation mechanism that has been gaining traction in recent weeks.
They explained that Speedy Trial would give miners three months to signal support for the Taproot upgrade with their hash power. If a supermajority of miners signals support for the upgrade within these three months, Taproot will activate a couple of months later: six months since the release of the software client that includes the activation logic. If miners don’t signal support within three months, the upgrade will expire and a new upgrade path can be considered. (It is, as of yet, not defined what the potential alternative upgrade path would look like.)
Van Wirdum explained that Speedy Trial was born out of a compromise between developers and users who preferred different upgrade mechanisms for the Taproot soft fork, while Provoost detailed what some of the more technical implementation considerations of Speedy Trial are, like the benefits of using block heights instead of timestamps, and the extended delay between signaling and enforcement. Finally, the hosts discussed some of the downsides and risks of Speedy Trial.