Ethereum Classic Developer Call – About the Next Aztlán and Phoenix Upgrades – Feb 5, 2020

The Ethereum Classic (ETC) developer team has just announced a new Core Dev call for Wednesday, February 05, 2020, 4pm UTC.

This call is very important because, for now, the next confirmed upgrade in ETC is only Aztlán, which was found to have a compatibility flaw after it was moved to accepted status as per the Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposal (ECIP) process.

However, some ecosystem participants, including this author, believe that:

A. Pushing a hard fork to the mainnet with a flaw is not acceptable.

B. Doing a subsequent hard fork to fix the flaw of the previous one is even less acceptable as per ETC’s tradition of high security, a “move slow, don’t break things” philosophy, and hard fork minimization.

The solution proposed, which this author supports, is to not cancel Aztlán per se, but to add a parallel fork, nicknamed “Phoenix“, which would happen at the same time as Aztlán, therefore solving both the flaw and the double-hard-fork problem.

The Aztlán and Phoenix upgrades proposed at the same time on block 10.500.839.

Details of the Call

The details of the call are as follows:

ETC Core Devs Call – ECIP-1078 Phoenix Finalization

When: Wednesday, February 05, 2020, 4pm UTC, 60 minutes max.

Where: Ethereum Classic Discord https://discord.gg/dwxb6nf #ecips channel. Will use/create a voice channel ad hoc.

Agenda

  • Quick client teams check-in
    • Parity Tech
    • ETC Core
    • ChainSafe
    • Multi-Geth
  • Aztlán needs to be fixed, options are:
    • patch ECIP-1061 with EIP-1884 #280 – very unlikely
      • because ecip-1061 already released in parity and multi-geth
      • because ecip-1061 already activated on mordor testnet
    • replace ECIP-1061 with ECIP-1079 – unlikely
      • because ECIP-1061 already released in parity and multi-geth
      • because ECIP-1061 already activated on mordor testnet
    • update ECIP-1061 with ECIP-{1078,1080} – more likely
      • because ECIP-{1078,1080} can be distinct fork “Phoenix”
      • because ECIP-{1078,1080} can be activated on different testnet blocks but same mainnet block
  • Phoenix (ECIP-1078) needs to be either accepted or updated (or rejected)
    • discuss included ECIP-1080
    • discuss a timeline for the protocol upgrade
      • Mordor Classic and Kotti Classic testnet (March?)
      • Ethereum Classic mainnet (April?)
  • anything else related to Aztlán and Phoenix

Please comment to add items to the agenda.

Other Possible Outcomes

Note that in the call, it is open for discussion whether a double-hard-fork is also possible. This author has already stated his opinion in advance as follows:

Stating in advance my opinion to activate both Aztlán and Phoenix on block 10_500_839 on Ethereum Classic PoW-mainnet (estimated on March 25th, 2020).

If it is concluded that there is no time to do both on the same block above, then I propose moving Aztlán back to draft to establish a new later block so both Aztlán and Phoenix can be done on the same block.

Rationale

  1. It doesn’t make sense to push to mainnet a fork with a flaw just because devs already integrated it into clients or because the ECIP process suddenly gains more importance than the mainnet.

  2. It doesn’t make sense to force a new hard fork just to fix a flaw that was pushed to mainnet as stated above. This is because hard forks are, in themselves, security hazards as they expand the technical and social layer risk surfaces. It also goes against a tradition in ETC to go slow and don’t break things and minimizing hard forks.

EDIT: As clarified by Bob Summerwill, Aztlán (ECIP-1061) would not be moved to draft if Phoenix cannot be done at the same block number, but would have to be moved to withdraw, so a totally new “redo” ECIP would have to be created, similar to ECIP-1079, to solve the problems described above in this article. I agree with this possible approach.

Invitation

As the call is open and public in the Ethereum Classic Discord, all miners, mining pools, full node operators, wallet operators, and other ETC stakeholders and interested parties of the public are invited to participate in the call.

If you want to comment on the Github discussion about the Ethereum Classic Aztlán-Phoenix upgrade, please go here:

https://github.com/ethereumclassic/ECIPs/issues/284

Code Is Law

Author: Donald McIntyre

Read about me here.