Topic: Soft Fork to Increase the 21M Limit? - page 2. (Read 3948 times)

Miners do not have to back SegWit if only a softfork is required. Once a BIP is published and the core developers reach agreement it will be merged into Bitcoin Core and miners will have to live with it.

You don't even need a softfork to issue alternative currency on bitcoin blockchain. See http://counterparty.io/

The real question is, however, why people would accept your alternative currency?

I agree with the "segregated witness" part. Although the "block size" will be within the 1MB limit, is it OK to forget the signature data completely? If not, and someone has to save them as archival data, then I rather prefer them to reside in the 1MB blocks.

SFCs are like bitcoin-2, bitcoin-3, ... and so on. Old full nodes can (and would) completely ignore them. But SFC-updated clients will be able to "see" a new currency type such as bitcoin-2.

This is different. All nodes validate rewards, but current nodes do not validate the size of the coinbase script (according to the witness idea at least) and the script can be pretty much anything.

Creating new coins however would be a hardfork, no full node would accept it.

Also the "segregated witness" AKA. the "lets overcomplicate things because we are bankers"-non-solution is stupid.
All it does is destroy completely the beauty of Bitcoin and increases the block size limit to 4 mb ... so just raise the damn limit if that is what we want, don't do this crap.

Luckily there is zero chance of miners backing the witness proposal - many of the miners are even scared to give themselves the power to vote on blocksize! (BIP100)

Miners are conservative and respect Bitcoin because if Bitcoin fails they stand to loose their entire business.

Recent advancements such as "Segregated Witness" by Pieter Wuille and "Drivechain" by Paul Sztorc showed the power and flexibility enabled by soft forks. But the same technique can also be used to effectively raise the 21M limit, by issuing "soft-fork-currencies" (SFCs) whose protocol rules are the same as those of cryptocurrencies.

For revenue-deficient miners (due to halvings), these soft-fork-currencies have a number of advantages compared with launching a (separate) new altcoin:

• Once implemented, all Bitcoin miners must follow the rules of SFCs, in addition to the original Bitcoin protocol.
• Exactly the same Bitcoin hardware backs the security of SFCs, as those blocks which violate the SFC rules will be orphaned. (same security level with BTC)
• SFC coins can be used to pay tx fees for the Bitcoin blockchain, in the same way as bitcoins.
• Launching a SFC requires miners' unanimous consent, which at some extent prohibits reckless overissuing of SFCs, so moderate scarcity will be achieved.
• The same process of value-creation can be used, with maximally diverse and strong userbase.

My concern is that, in the near future miners' revenue will unproportionally diminish relative to their vital roll in the Bitcoin network. In other words, there will be a point where miners' power is huge but there is not enough revenue for them. This opens the possibility of miners trying to monetize their power through issuing SFCs (soft forks).

Paul Sztorc noted that:
http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/contracts-oracles-sidechains/#bitcoins-limited-government

If miners can create additional revenue streams for themselves, then the above equation does not hold.
Moreover, unlike proof-of-stake coins, bitcoins and SFCs have symmetrical relationship: the blockchain protocol is agnostic of which one is used as a currency or tx fees as long as they have value.

So this "feature" can be used to complement the miners' revenue and possibly prolong the Bitcoin's life span, although the 21M limit will get shaky.

I'm not necessarily convinced that the feature is bad for Bitcoin, but if the miners start to issue SFCs, I'm not certain the ramifications to the bitcoin as a currency. Thoughts?