THE CODE THAT CHANGES BITCOIN'S PROOF OF WORK IS STILL MARKED DRAFT — REVIEWERS FLAG AN ASSERTION THAT CRASHES THE NODE — AND YOU CAN READ EVERY LINE OF IT YOURSELF

Luke Dashjr opened pull request 359 on the Bitcoin Knots repository on August 15. Title: “Hardfork: New BLAKE2b proof-of-work algorithm.” Twenty-one commits. As of today it is still marked Draft and it has not been merged. That is not an accusation, it is the state of the page, and anyone can load it. Read the review comments and a contributor points out that a byte count assertion in the block hashing says 88 where it should say 90, which crashes the node when it computes the new header hash. Another flags that the switch meant to set the changeover time does not parse the format its own documentation describes, so the node fails to start. A third says the test does not mirror the real hash construction. Now read the description, because it is not a crank document. The reshaped header buys a lot more nonce space, an opt-in fix for block withholding, room for merge mining, a transaction count commitment that properly closes CVE-2017-12842, and preparation for 64-bit block time. Real engineering, honestly argued. The mandatory phase of BIP 110 drew 2.53 percent of miners and produced two blocks. The man who wrote the code has since left Ocean and started a mining pool for the new chain, which you are also allowed to know. Nobody had to ask permission to write any of this and nobody had to run it. Both halves of that sentence are the point. A press release you have to believe. A repository you can check.