What Happens Next

by BlakeKeiller, Sunday, November 21, 2021, 13:01 (14 days ago)

As previously stated I lost control of the proofgold.org domain several months ago. I have been trying to get the code to a state that the network can continue without me having the ability to suggest new changes. Unfortunately this has also meant some changes have been rushed.

I no longer believe it is likely that the Proofgold network can survive without updates to the code. To put arbitrary numbers to my assessment, I'd only give the network a 25% chance of surviving with no future hard forks and a 10% chance of surviving with no future soft forks.

One of the last changes I have put into the code are the "alerts" that are broadcast on the Litecoin block chain. If you are running a node and looking for alerts, grep your debug.log for lines that begin with ALERT:

grep ^ALERT debug.log

If you are running Proofgold in console mode (instead of as a daemon) you will also see alerts in your stdout.

If someone needs to coordinate a future soft fork or hard fork, the "broadcastalert" command is really the only hope for sending a message (probably with a link) to let nodes know they need to update.

Please keep in mind that literally anyone can send an alert. A malicious actor could send an alert asking nodes to update to malicious code as easily anyone else. Each person running a node will need to decide for themselves what alerts to take seriously and what alerts to ignore. I will note that nodes can sign messages with addresses and verify those signatures using the commands signmessage (or signmessagewithkey) and verifymessage. Someone sending an alert could link to a message and include such a signature with the message that people could check for themselves. If the address corresponds to a staker or someone who has published documents/proved theorems, then it would be natural to take the alert more seriously. Even then, it's only a heuristic.

With that warning in mind, I would still recommend giving alerts and alleged updates the benefit of the doubt, at least in the near future. I suspect Proofgold is more likely to die from neglect than attack.

Good luck and buyer beware.