Topic: Whats the likelihood of a coin/network split/fork come Aug 1? (Read 1742 times)

Core should not have pitched Segwit as a scaling solution but just a simple upgrade to fix transaction malleability plus others that make the protocol more secure and robust.

For you personally, and I am not asking as a scaling solution, is Segwit a good upgrade for the network in general?

There has to be some plans to prepare every party involved to minimize the loss, I have an insane idea, why not intentionally split the chain with planned preparations? lets have 1 chain with 50% of hash rate and second chain with another 50%.
Why would you go hostile and kill off the minority?
Or every body could play nice and upgrade, if not then get ready to stay as a minority chain miner/node and die after a few weeks. whatever we do the majority will win the battle as it was intended in the first place.

This is not "months ago".  This started already when Satoshi introduced the 1 MB block limit. At that point, people saw the troubles ahead already. 

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.23049

The "problem" is that bitcoin is supposed to be decentralized, that is, there is no "boss of bitcoin".  As such, there are no "people that can sit together and come to an agreement".  (if there are such people, and if their agreement is what will happen to bitcoin, then those people are the governors of bitcoin)

Bitcoin was designed with a hard wall into which it was going to crash (to solve a problem for which there was no well-thought solution and is a *profound problem* in bitcoin) ; and there's no mechanism that was foreseen to bring a solution, because Satoshi thought, or at least claimed, that one "could simply add a few lines in the code to change it", denying the essence of his invention, which is consensus by many different entities which have different, and sometimes opposing, interests.

In fact, the solution was relatively easy as long as it was just a matter of a block size increase, but now, there are two different views: off chain scaling and on chain scaling ; with the nasty side effect that in order for off chain scaling to be POTENTIALLY successful, people have to be forced OFF the chain ; but on the other hand, for off chain scaling to be SECURE and permissionless, the chain has to be able to accept any amount of transactions.

Personally, I am feed up with all of these shits flying around everywhere on the net. Months ago, when Bitcoin started to face the scaling problems, there seems to be groups who are proposing different ways to solve the problem and instead of them sitting together and rationally discuss the whole thing they instead chose to mudslinging and destroying each others' names and reputations.

Right now, it is the same thing that is haunting Bitcoin. All because we have people who could not rise above and let their own greedy interest take their heads and they can be so willing to sacrifice Bitcoin in the altar of greed. Maybe they want to destroy Bitcoin because they are planning to have it replace by another coin where they have bigger stakes.

This is getting to be a big circus. When will this stop?

 


Well, no economic desire can express itself if there is no market, so no economic force can push one version over another one before both options are available in the market.   We've seen with the ethereum split that exchanges that were hostile to the split and refused to list ETC in the beginning, were actually obliged to do so, for two reasons.  The first reason is of course purely economical: an exchange takes fees on people EXCHANGING coins, it would be silly to forego the HUGE amount of fees to be taken on exchanging coinsA vs coinsB and vice versa.  What exchange wouldn't want to profit from this ?
But the other reason is that if there's a split, and they don't list it, they would be (rightfully) considered scammers: after all, the owners of old coins on their exchange are *supposed* to be owner of the two versions after the split.  If the exchange refuses to give one of them to their legitimate owners, then the exchange can actually KEEP THEM and monetize them on another exchange.  However, if they do that, and afterwards, they are constrained to give both coins to their owners, they can be in deep financial trouble if the coin they stole and sold, increased value afterwards.  I think Coinbase was in that kind of trouble after the ethereum split, when coinbase refused to consider ETC at first and had to consider it later.
So the thing to do as an exchange, is to be ready to the split, to assign their customers their rightful ownership of both coins, and profit maximally from all the exchange fees between them.  Its the safest, the most lucrative and the most honest.

That is a nice Star Trek reference there.

From your explanation, I believe the exchanges will play a critical role here. Would it be the best move for them to list BTC-148 and make the situation much worse? By listing it, yes it is letting the market decide which chain is preferred, but it also gives the chance of a permanent split which is something that should not happen to Bitcoin.
 

Indeed, this is what makes it difficult in bitcoin to make a genuine fork: the slow difficulty adaptation.  This was, BTW, not the case in ethereum, that adapts much more quickly, which let the ETC chain survive with less than 10% of the hash rate ; but bitcoin has such slow difficulty adjustment, that 10% is not possible: the block rate is simply too slow.  Note that a HARD FORK could solve this by "fudging by hand" the difficulty, but this cannot be done with a soft fork.

However, the hash rate ratio between legacy bitcoin and 148-bitcoin will of course INITIALLY be determined by the miners that decide to boldly split where nobody split before, but ONCE both coins are listed on exchanges, the hash rates will follow the market split.  That is to say, if USERS IN THE MARKET give 148-bitcoin 70% of the market cap, then 70% of the hash rate will follow 148-bitcoin (and in this case, if nothing is done, end up overtaking legacy-bitcoin).

The reason why hash rate follows market cap, is simply that as long as this is not the case, it is more *profitable* to mine on the chain that has less hash rate than its market cap.   So if miners are seeking maximum profit, they have to divide over the two coins in the same ratio as the market cap (in reality, as the block rewards).

So this is where in the end, the users decide, ONCE THEY HAVE THE TWO COINS on exchanges.

However, as you correctly point out, to even make the two coins available to exchanges and allow them to even decide to list them, both chains have to exist, and hence, miners have to decide to split off.  If they are too low in number, that is, if the initial hash rate of the forkers is too low, they will make a VERY VERY slow chain.

That said, as long as the market is essentially determined, not on-chain, but with exchange IOU, this may not matter much, and a few blocks per day may even be enough for exchanges to decide to list the two bitcoins, and do everything on-web-site without actually using the chain (as long as you don't want to withdraw 148-coins) but with exchange IOU instead of coins.

A minority chain with 15% hashrate at current difficulty would take around 6 days to mine 100 blocks, means less PoW, difference in PoW between two chains, would this stagnate the minority chain, can't say. Found this on Reddit, website to track BIP148 and legacy chain, http://uasf.snel.it

It survives indefinitely unless the miners eventually abandon it; you would now have two completely incompatible chains. It only gets interesting if a compaible segwit gets activated on the other chain down the track.

I am thinking about holding some Ethereum Classic myself. I will finally be having my first altcoin.

dinofelis thanks for the thorough explanation. Another question would be how long would a minority chain "survive" if it gets around 15% - 20% of hashing power, and if it is possible for BIP 148 to gain such support? Let us put our speculation hats on for the sake of discussion.

the idea to make some investment in altcoin,is it safe?
if the split happen,how it will affect the price?
can you enlighten me,because i am going to make investment in altcoin too

A chain split could be avoided if:

1. BIP 148 gets enough support, if 51% of miners activate BIP 148 before or after August 1.

2. If 95% of miners lock in Segwit before August 1.

If BIP 148 has a minority hashrate support then there obviously would be a chain split. There would be two bitcoins and that would indeed be a messy situation, double-spends, a single transaction getting tied to two different chains. But even after chain split, segwit activated BIP 148 should have upper hand and as this chain gets longer it should replace/wipe out the legacy chain. If I am right at the end there would be only one chain.

The best scenario for the bitcoin community is to avoid chain split. But I guess it would not going to be easy with retards like Jihan Wu and his allies who own 51% of hashrate.

For the time being it is a good idea to make some investments in litecoin. Let the dust settle down after August 1.

It is very hard to say, because signalling for segwit is one thing ; wanting bitcoin to split is another.  I can imagine that there are many miners that would like segwit, but not so much as to want to fork bitcoin into two coins ; so maybe certain miners would like *consensus* over segwit, but don't want a non-consensual split. 

In fact, it is illogical to want a non-consensual split and desire a soft fork (unless you're just a power-hungry dictator).  Core has always been against hard forks, because without huge majority, they MIGHT induce a chain split.  Now, the funny thing is that one is CALLING for a chain split to impose a soft fork.  The only reason why Core abhors hard forks is that they are terribly afraid (or so they say) that the chain might split, and people wanting to push their solution are proposing a chain split to get Core's stuff in. 

Also, "signalling" doesn't cost anything.  You're free to set that bit or not.  Your blocks are still on the unique chain.  However, going on the fork means that you apply your hash rate to a minority fork, and you might very well waste your blocks if it doesn't get traction.  In other words, the difference between signalling segwit and going on a UASF fork, is "putting your money where your mouth is".

Just wait and facking watch this porn movie of Bitcoin chromosomes split in half for the anti-Satoshi to be born.
One thing many of people tend to ignore, money is delicious and tastes so good, it makes you fat & bald & ugly yet chicks will dig you, just see how it has made Wu to appear for some people, an idol to worship.
They have seen the results of ETH/ETC split and they want more money, they know people are invested deep in that they will go along with everything to avoid losing money.

Imagine we would have 2 Bitcoins 2*21M=42M and then keep one of them as a retarded chain as before with small blocks and high fees for the higher class investors trying to transact not a few bucks but millions with every single transaction and paying $40-$80 as a fee won't hurt them.

Second coin/chain being as a secondary layer network the fast low fee transactions and micro transactions, entirely a new platform for developers to explore and experiment.

I say it is a 100% chance of having a split from a hard fork.

But we may or may not get the benefit of having both currencies(as happened with ETH and ETC).

Depending on how it goes down or what happens, if you have your coins in an exchange and a hardfork happens they don't have to let you have both. Some exchanges were nice and did let you withdraw both ETH and ETC or whatever it was(was just recently reading about it). Very interesting because you can make some money from it obviously in the short term.

Best to have all of your coins out of exchanges before August 1st, so you can control your own private keys.

A little speculation. Do you think the miners that are signaling for Segwit activation would support UASF? Segwit - BIP 9 right now is at 30%. If all that starts signaling BIP 148 we will see the blockchain split. With that much support would that split become permanent?

I have asked the same question before but no one gives a straight answer.

A split seems inevitable, the main question is which side gets to keep the name Bitcoin.

A split cannot be ignored completely.

1. UASF might become the only chain if it gets more PoW.

2. Two chains (most plausible scenario, might be more) UASF and Legacy BTC, users would end up having coins on both sides of the fork.

3. Spending coins on one chain would become impossible without accidentally spending coins on the other. Exchanges would start working as coin splitting services. Different wallets for different chains.

Get hold of your private keys, transfer any coins from online wallets or exchanges to desktop wallets, better be safe.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide-surviving-bip-148-uasf/

We could be related.

UASF is yet another illogical argument to propagate the illusion that full nodes have anything to say.  I would like the trigger to be pulled because it is an interesting experiment that will settle the question for good.

In all this "UASF" thing, there's one sort of entities that doesn't matter a shit, and that's the number of nodes signalling it.  Because what is the idea of this "UASF" ?

In fact, the simple idea is that >51% hash rate on a soft fork, IMPOSES the soft fork on everybody.  Note that this is a MINER decision.  It is a property of a soft fork that any hash rate majority is imposed upon the rest.  Core never actually wrote software that did this, because they wanted consensus, and hence raised the limit artificially to 95%, but any >51% can do.  Users, nor nodes, have anything to do with this: if a majority of miners implements a soft fork, it is AUTOMATICALLY imposed upon all.  ==> nothing to do with full nodes or users.  In fact, to do this, you only need normal Core software for miners, but lower the activation threshold from 95% to 51%.

However, UASF proponents think that they won't even get miner majority at first sight.  So what is needed then ?

1) that a non-negligible MINORITY of miners decide to apply the hard fork, and hence INDUCE A CHAIN SPLIT, with a minority chain applying the soft fork, and a majority chain continuing to use the legacy chain (the short chain will grow at a slower pace).

2) that there is some piece of software around that can read this new chain and not get confused by the longest chain -> this  is where UASF come in: to be able to have TWO WALLETS: one with the new coin, and one with the old coin.

3) that exchanges will LIST the two coins (hence needing both chains, and both types of nodes/wallets)

4) that USERS will dump the majority coin (legacy bitcoin) and buy massively the minority UASF coin

5) that miners will follow the money, now that this is done on exchanges

6) that in doing so, the minority chain can attract the majority of HASH RATE

7) that the old chain is overtaken, or has to HF to protect itself so that the two coins remain forever.

Note that in all of this, any "majority of UASF nodes" is never needed or doesn't play any role.   The "user interaction" only comes in the market, after the miners decided to split, and the exchanges decided to list both coins.


The secret hope of UASF is that this scenario is such a night mare to all miners, that they would suddenly be converted to go majority to the new coin before even letting this happen.  In other words, it is a kind of silly hostage taking: "if you don't do it the way I say, I might have enough hash rate to fuck up bitcoin into two coins even though for the moment I'm largely minority". 

It's a kind of game of chicken, but with a motor cycle heading against a tank.