** Please stay with BIBLEPAY during the thick and thin **I want to take the time to mention how much we at BiblePay appreciate the long term loyalty of the original users who stayed with us through thick and thin.
Thank you for being here with us while we go through troubling times.
Let me explain the situation with LLMQs as compared to 'normal mandatory upgrades'. A while back, I vowed that we would do everything possible to prevent forks (we would upgrade to randomx, we would pre-test any consensus changes and verify they will not add fork risk, and we will resist changes that cause danger to consensus). Realize that we have been doing all of that, and now we have an environment where the chain itself is very resilient to forks: RandomX is a proof-of-work algorithm that is merge mined, and not fork prone, and requires real energy to create blocks. Our APM feature is deterministic. Our daily GSC contracts (for PODC) are as strong as Dash masternode voting calls for budget blocks.
Now, realize with LLMQ, we are enabling this system to gain more features that we do not currently have. LLMQs facilitate chainlocks (which provide even greater security), instantsend 10 second transactions, and POSE/POOS banning. Realize that POSE banning is no longer based on an unstrusted call to a port, it now requires a node to participate in the quorum signing session to determine the node is alive.
I've been following DASH's rollout of Spork 6 (new sigs), Spork 17 (Quorum DKG), Spork 19 (Chainlocks), DIP3 (Deterministic MNs), and DIP8 (new LLMQ version+ChainLocks enforced), and hopefully everyone realizes that Dash's codebase was released in multiple steps (.14 to .15) with certain on-chain votes that took place between Spork enable and DIP-enable bitsets. And we have been mostly successful in mirroring the rollout order, so as to simulate the requirements to jump from DM->LLMQ->Chainlocks. We successfully enabled Deterministic Sanctuaries without forking, and LLMQs phase 1. However in June when we rolled out ChainLocks, our environment contained everything except DIP0008 (because this required an on-chain vote for a bit in versionbitsstate for dip8 - that I was not aware existed). At that point I shut off ChainLocks and LLMQ at the spork level and decided we need to wait for this September mandatory to perform the update. (Some may ask, why was this LLMQ consensus breaker not caught in testnet? We actually did test this LLMQ execution in full in testnet, but the difference in testnet is we had 6 sanctuaries solo mining, but in prod, we have two pools. The exact difference in prod is the pools do not enforce LLMQ rules during the first 205 block transition phase, while in testnet those that solo mined *did* enforce LLMQ rules - hence a difference between test and prods rollout.)
Now we are in the midst of rolling out LLMQs again. My view of LLMQs is just as strict as our POW consensus quality level. Now that we know that LLMQ has its own set of consensus rules (Enforcing non-null commitments, enforcing complete quorums with lookback over the last day), we are committed to staying on LLMQs once they are enabled and preventing any future consensus breaking events, forever. I go as far as saying we need to lock in our chain security after this event and not touch it for a couple years, but instead focus on value adds in the gospel area and in the area where we release other groundbreaking features (in contrast to adding any consensus changes in the future).
With this all said, let me lay out a roadmap over the next 1000 blocks so everyone, and exchanges know exactly what our plans are. The current height is 219570.
Roadmap over the next 1000 Blocks:
Height Event
220000 At this height, everyone will be running 1.5.2.7. We will verify that LLMQ quorums started. Exchanges are in maintenance. We will let the quorums run for 205 blocks and provide an update.
220400 At this height, we will ask some users to erase the chain and resync. We need to confirm that the quorums are loaded and mirror the rest of the network. We also need to confirm the chain syncs from zero and the quorums have not broken any business logic.
220500 At this height, we will ask the exchanges to upgrade and open again for trading. At this point, LLMQs are a success.
220700 At this height we can enable other features that rely on LLMQ, such as chainlocks and 10 second IX transactions.
Thank you for being patient with BiblePay during this transition to Long Living Masternode Quorums.
4200 BBP