Step-by-step: the road to Fleming, 1: The Big Questions: SAFE Fleming and Beyond

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In my considered opinion the network has to be able to function with at least previous version and current (new) version. Ideally it would work even if there are a few versions variations in the nodes.

To attempt to run all nodes on the one version, especially after releasing the new version, is folly and doomed to massive failure of the network.

  • it would only take one mistake of a certain kind and the network never recovers in a suitable way. It would require people to restart nodes with different version in an attempt to recover.
  • Common security is to NEVER accept an update without verifying its worth, security and viability first. No matter how good the automatic checking systems are. Some people may accept it and trust the “system”, but anyone who has had anything to do with network updates or security will not.
  • The logistics of trying to run only one version ever at a time is overwhelming and amounts to a network restart at a coordinated time. <---- This is in violation of one of the fundamentals concerning Time It would require the nodes/protocols to then have a respect to actual time in order to coordinate the restart time and cannot work in the real world.
  • etc

The best situation is to have upgrades tolerant to various versions. So the question should be “How many versions back can we support”

That requires updates to be written in a tolerant way, to specify for each upgrade what versions will not be supported anymore. And of course be at least many months of upgrades.

It is also possible for the network to be segmented for a long period due to a country being segregated and the chances of some data not being accessible is high. So the network needs to be able to recover that data once the nodes in that country return. (IIRC @tfa was one of those who showed this probably is very high). If the nodes are not tolerant of older versions (at least 6-12 months) then that data is likely to be lost since those returning nodes can no longer be a part of the network and permanent loss of perpetually of that data/files occurs.

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