Miner activated hard fork (MAHF) - page 2.

serjent05

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Quote from: Nefelibato on January 12, 2023, 12:39:16 PM

Thank you all for the thoughts. Bitcoin Cash was MAHF and UAHF, I think so too.

I read that Bitcoin cash is UAHF, not MAHF, it was stated that Bitcoin Cash was activated by a minority of the users rather than the majority of miners. Some article stated that the hard fork that creates Bitcoin cash on August 1st, 2017 was through MAHF but as far as I know, a UAHF was proposed by a group of users and developers who wanted to increase the block size limit on the Bitcoin network which is also stated in this article[1]

[1] https://coingeek.com/fork-ahead-bitcoin-cash-will-fork-bigger-blocks-august-1/

NotATether

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Quote from: Nefelibato on January 12, 2023, 12:39:16 PM

Thank you all for the thoughts. Bitcoin Cash was MAHF and UAHF, I think so too.

One could also argue that ETHW was a miner-activated hard fork, though I have no idea if any concept of the sort exists in Ethereum.

Because it's basically a lot of the out-of-business miners launching the fork without user support.

Nefelibato

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Thank you all for the thoughts. Bitcoin Cash was MAHF and UAHF, I think so too.

Carlton Banks

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Quote from: takuma sato on January 10, 2023, 11:10:08 PM

You need consensus from several parties for people to follow your HF.

is that not tautological though? "people will agree with you, but only if they agree to it"

any miner can "activate" or "lock in" a hard fork, such expressions arguably only serve as rhetorical devices, i.e.

bitcoin devs looking to reach consensus with users can use these sorts of words to make it sound powerful / empowering, to breed confidence
a hostile fork could equally use such language to scare users into believing there's no escape from this strong, unstoppable force

in other words, it's marketing/PR when anyone does it really, or at least it's become that way

as everyone says though, a miner unilaterally hard forking may find themselves mining an increasingly lonely blockchain.

jackg

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Quote from: Nefelibato on January 11, 2023, 09:32:42 AM

What I can't find is some past event where a MAHF occurred, it's possible?

I doubt there has been one or will be one since asics and nodes are separate entities.

A MAHF/SF would likely only occur if a critical vulnerability was found that needed to be patched quickly imo as it has a much higher risk of a chain split than the current model of what seems to be in its simplest form:
1. Proposal generated
2. Code changes made to show what the proposal will do
3. Miners asked to signal their cooperation in the upgrade
4. UAF only goes ahead once a majority of the hashing power is dedicated to the change (only needs to be 50% but 90-95% is normally reached pretty fast iirc after the first few signal to accept it).

Because it's being discussed, segwit was a soft fork and was activated as one at the time because there was a consensus of miners.
The chain split to bcash was probably both a miner activated hard fork of bitcoin and a user activated one as bitcoin became incompatible with it immediately (at least because they had replay protection) but needed both miners (verifiers) and nodes (propagators) to make the new chain.

pooya87

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Quote from: Nefelibato on January 11, 2023, 09:32:42 AM

SegWit is an example of UASF.

Wrong. BIP148, commonly known as UASF, made a lot of noise on social media but no real momentum in real life. It had very little node support and even less miners support. SegWit on the other hand had much more support and it was activated through another proposal known as SegWit2x although the 2x part of it (hard fork to double the weight limit) never gained any support so that part failed.

Nefelibato

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I understand that Bitcoin Cash was a UAHF, as the article quotes.
https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148/
SegWit is an example of UASF. What I can't find is some past event where a MAHF occurred, it's possible?

pooya87

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Exactly. ^^
Bitcoin is a combination of everyone that includes miners, full nodes, regular users, developers and even the economy that is built on top of Bitcoin. Whenever there is a fork (whether hard or soft) a consensus needs to be reached among all of these groups even though some have more influence than others. If there is no consensus (MAHF, MASF, UASF, UAHF,...) the risk of chain-split grows hence these could be considered attacks on Bitcoin principles.
That is why the result of such actions are always considered a shitcoin like bitcoin-cash that was created using MAHF.

takuma sato

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You need consensus from several parties for people to follow your HF. I don't think miners can "activate a hardfork", if by "activate" we describe it as something that is actually functional (because anyone is free to hardfork at any time). So in practice, MAHF is not a thing. And I would argue other variants aren't as well. There is either consensus of miners, users and developers, or there isn't anything functional, the way I see it is that the method how it "activates" is not that relevant.

Nefelibato

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Is there any example of MAHF? From what I have read, the BCC fork was a UAHF, so after reading many articles I have not found any MAHF.

Topic: Miner activated hard fork (MAHF) - page 2. (Read 400 times)