Update on the Great Consensus Cleanup Revival

The message from Antoine addresses the comprehensive approach required for deploying soft forks in the context of Bitcoin development. He argues against the practice of partially fixing security vulnerabilities through soft forks, emphasizing the importance of bundling all fixes together to justify the substantial fixed costs associated with deployment. Antoine reasons that leaving the protocol partly vulnerable by only patching some security bugs is not a prudent strategy, despite the technical feasibility of such an approach.

Furthermore, Antoine clarifies misconceptions regarding the confiscation surface related to a 2019 proposal, pointing out that the criticisms of the past do not apply to the current proposed fix. He outlines a new strategy aimed at mitigating worst-case validation times without compromising the functionality of the Bitcoin Script. This method involves introducing a transaction level limit rather than disabling opcodes or other script functionalities. The goal of this conservative approach is to specifically target and mitigate harmful behavior while ensuring that legitimate transactions remain unaffected.