Topic: hard forks questions (Read 1510 times)

Heres my hard fork question. What if it was BTC core that wanted to hard fork to bigger blocks and it was the other group of developers that wanted segregated witness. Would the supporters of Bitcoin Unlimited support it or will they support the other group?

Hard forks happen when a miner makes a block that is invalid by the current consensus rules but is valid under different consensus rules and that block activates those new consensus rules. Hard forks make something that is invalid under the current rules valid under the new rules. There is currently the possibility for a hard fork from Bitcoin Unlimited, but it is impossible to know when that will happen (if it will at all) and what conditions it will activate under (it has no defined activation conditions).

Dear all:
When hard forks happen, I do not understand?

I can assure you this is what (or at least is very similar to what) the major exchanges are going to do. If an exchange were to not do this, and BTU were to hold any significant value, then customers would avoid said exchanges like the plague because their customers will have lost money really for no reason.

In my view BU will centralize decision making, if major mining pools can manage to force this hard fork and we are left with two smaller chains that may or may not be attacked by the bigger side with more hash power. < if that makes sense >

We now have one big network with loads of hash power, and if this split in two, we will have a more vulnerable network that are smaller in hash power and more vulnerable to attacks. ^sad^

Which of Bitcoin unlimited or segwit will result in centralization? and why?

I think that is bankers' plot，holding bitcoin firm

I mean, you can hypothesize all you want, but every large exchange literally already said they are doing what I wrote and exactly not doing what you described.

This is not true. In the event of a chain split, the exchanges would likely temporarily suspend deposits/withdrawals temporarily. Exchanges would then "split" some of their coins by sending a transaction to one address on one chain, then sending a transaction that depends on the same inputs to another address on the other chain. Once both transactions are confirmed, the exchanges may repeat this process in order to have a greater number of coins that are outright "split". After this happens, any withdrawal that the exchanges processes will be dependent on the split transaction(s) on each chain -- exchanges could use two inputs, one from the "combined/unsplit" chain, and one from a specific chain, and this transaction would only be valid on one chain.

Due to certain mining incentives, it is unlikely that very many new blocks will be found on the minority chain with the same type of PoW. If "Bitcoin Core" chain is to survive, then the Core dev team would most likely HF to a new PoW, which would mostly eliminate the risk of a "wipeout" and 51% type attacks on either chain. Until this happens, it is most likely that deposits and withdrawals will not be processed due to the high risk of monitory loss.

This is also not true. Exchanges will list coins that have sufficient demand by their customers. (see my above comment).

Forks suffer from a problem known as transaction replaying - If you tried to spend coins on one fork, it would probably be spent on the other fork too, which makes it nearly impossible for exchanges to accept/trade both.

Exchanges would only trade in the original (core) fork until BU adds the necessary replay protections to their fork, and have said as much.  It isn't a matter of supporting one or the other so much as a necessity because of the technical problems.  BU, naturally, does not wish to add replay protections as it could reveal very low numbers of adoption and use, and also represents the point of no return.

Once BU adds replay protections, most exchanges will list both coins until one fork dies.  The price of BU coins are most likely going to be much, much lower (though the prices of both forks will drop significantly), which is going to put revenue-sensitive miners in a world of hurt.

It isn't going to be pretty for anyone.  Ethereum's price will go up.

Thanks,

In case of a split, which coins the major bitcoin exchange (bitfinex, kraken, bitstamp) will choose? WHat would be consider as the real bitcoin?

Reasons for:

-Change in development team due to arguable abuse of power from Core team
-Increase in block size and flexibility of future changes results in Bitcoin being able to handle more transactions

Reasons against:

-BU is incompetent and major bugs/flaws have been found (arguably why most of the nodes are still Core despite hashing power)
-Core is offering more effective solutions which don't require increases to the block size which could result in centralisation (SegWit)
-BU would be a new coin (a hard fork) which could split Bitcoin and make it a competition (some people even argue that BTU would be an altcoin).

There are more detailed reasons than that but that's the basics of it.

hello,

I would like to know why some people are against and why some are for the hard fork to BT unlimited? thanks for detailing each part's reasons....

thanks a lot