Are the BIP 100, BIP 101 and BIP 102 proposals being voted on now by miners? What is the procedure for a bitcoin miner to vote for a particular BIP and where can a tally of votes be viewed?
1 Answer
There isn't any blockchain voting for accepting a BIP: See How is a BIP accepted? and BIP0001.
Rather, the BIP is accepted or rejected on the basis of consensus. Consensus is never defined, but even if you interpret it fairly broadly, I don't think any of the three will reach consensus.
There are frequently blockchain votes about activating the new rules, but that's less of a mechanism to measure acceptance and more of a way to only deploy the new changes once enough of the network runs them that the switchover won't be disruptive.
There is a related issue, which is Bitcoin-XT, which grew out of several developer's frustrations with the process. That proposes to alter the blocksize according to BIP 101 once more than 75% of the blocks are created by Bitcoin-XT nodes. But that's not something within the BIP process.
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You might want to differentiate between hard and soft changes, as there's a catastrophic difference between the two.– ClarisAug 16, 2015 at 20:30
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The distinction is important, but it's out of scope of the question, and has been elaborated elsewhere. Aug 16, 2015 at 20:33
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2It's necessary in understanding why it isn't up to miners to make breaking changes, and why voting for it with a coinbase string isn't completely appropriate.– ClarisAug 16, 2015 at 20:38
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1@Bitcoin Nor are hardforks entirely up to Bitcoin Core developers. I sense that we're getting into an argument that we've had before. I feel that my answer to the asker's question is complete. If you disagree, you're free to write an answer. Aug 16, 2015 at 21:13