I've been reading over a few bits of history (see sources below), and the removal of the alert system has bothered me quite a bit. It was stated here
4 that:
The Alert system has also lost its usefulness. It is no longer necessary to use it to inform users about problematic network events as users can easily get their information from any major Bitcoin news outlet.
The other justification
1 was that the
Alert Key (was) Compromised
This is related to the fact that there was a single key for the alert system, which was handed out to a number of core devs, and over the years people left the project. Thus it was thought that this was a risk (in that people could send alerts without vetting) that might affect users.
I wanted to talk about this because although I agree with the latter (I don't believe that you can leave the key for an alert system in the hands of so many people), I disagree with the former.
The alert system had not lost it's usefulness at all.The justification was that communication could be done to the community through:
- forums
- reddit
- slack
- github
- an opt in mailing list
IMO this is an incredibly short sighted point of view, and one that is now biting us in the butt. One of the major bottlenecks to getting BIPs through has been the difficulty in communicating to clients and getting clients updated to prevent problems.
An alert system is incredibly useful in the event of a necessary HF to implement proposed BIPs. This has been a
HUGE issue in the community and it could have been avoided had an alert system
of some kind been kept in place/added.
An alert system completely solves the issue of users forgoing critical updates to their clients, which allows for faster progress in development.
I think this is something that needs to be discussed and pushed forward perhaps in the future. Some may think it is too late to do something now, but while the best time for the alert system was yesterday, the second best time is today.
Example of the old alert system:
Sources:
1. Alert System - Bitcoin Wiki -(
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alert_system)
2. Github alert system removal 1 - (
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6260)
3. Github alert system removal 2 - (
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7692)
4. Bitcoin.org announcement of removal - (
https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2016-11-01-alert-retirement)