GP Statement on CHIP-2021-02-Add-Native-Introspection-Opcodes

• CHIP-2021-02-Add-Native-Introspection-Opcodes

• Version for this statement: 904dbc1c9a06d90a54e8fa102c11fb40f97bbc4f

Summary Statement

The CHIP requires further analysis and specification before it is possible to take a strong position. GP commits to supporting this CHIP with reasonable resources. GP predicts that the benefits to BCH value and network effect will greatly outweigh the costs. Regarding the multiple implementation options available, GP sees multiple good options and encourages the active CHIP participants to choose one with reasonable logic and zero polarization.

Commitment

GP commits to supporting Jonathan and Jason as organizers of the CHIP, commits to providing resources and data to clarify costs and benefits, and commits to other reasonable support as needed.

Benefits

GP predicts that the changes in this CHIP will increase BCH network value by making it cheaper, easier and safer for everyone to build BCH smart contract protocols, projects and products. This will increase entrepreneur and developer quality of life, making it easier to grow the network. Contracts will also shrink significantly with a host of positive long term consequences.

Costs

GP predicts that the cost to node developers will mostly be a one-time effort, and that barring emergency vulnerabilities, the cost to the larger network will be negligible besides the node upgrade itself.

Opportunity Cost

GP has experience to suggest strongly that the alternative of doing nothing would be a significant blow to growth of smart contracts, defi and other applications on BCH.

Special Considerations

Both implementation options that GP is aware of (one op code per item or a list of item ids + a load op code) have benefits and drawbacks. Individuals at GP have varying opinions on which one will be better in the end, but all agree that both options are good. The more important thing is not to let the choice between two good options devolve into polarization.

GP would like for the upgrade to be reasonably complete regarding introspection data, but not to include any introspection features that have unknown or unconvincing use cases. Although GP will likely benefit from additional features, we consider well-balanced upgrades, with a bias towards being conservative to be important for maintaining network political and technical stability.

(GP's opinion first described here.)

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