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Very high consensus can't make two surviving chains.
actually it can.
an altcoin can be made by just 1 node deciding it wll do its own thing if it wanted to.
an altcoin can be made by majority banning and splitting that last 5% minority.
but then that minority have to ask themselves is there a good enough reason to try keeping it going.
(so many scenarios running through my mind.. kinda hard to summarise it all)
a few things we are sure of
1. BU wont trigger unless safe majority of node and pool (no threats, no time bombs, no blackmails. just plod along and let nature handle it)
2, core will have the triggers, time bombs and threats and could trigger while things are contentious, forcing the issue
still too early to tell
If a handful of non-mining nodes are still active, that does not count toward chain status.
In the event we are talking about, there must be some miners. If there is 1 miner/pool with
a "reasonable" amount of hash power, where that single miner has the ability to mine till a
difficultly adjustment within the next year or so, then it is still alive. The question then comes
down to whether they can afford to do so. The answer is very likely that they can not and as
such, the minority chain will die. If it takes that single miner 500 years to get to the difficultly
adjustment, even though the whole community likely left them behind, that chain survives and
will work its way out of the "difficulty snare".
Bitcoin versus Altcoin status can not be determined on "longest chain/most work" because one
day that could be used against the community in an obviously malicious way, IMO.
i think im going to drive your mind crazy now..
sorry in advance
5% of pool consensus of blocks does not mean 5% hashpower.
5% of pool consensus of blocks does not mean 20x longer to make a block once going at it with 95% less competition...
No, I know that. This is "luck at finding the nonce" versus "raw hash computation".
the maths does not work that linearly.
EG if there are 4 pools of equal hash. it does not mean take one away and the time moves to 20 minutes.
No, I know that. The time would in theory be an average 12.5 minutes per block for the last three.
because the competition may have only been only seconds behind getting their own solution.
bitcoins are not mined based on the combined hashpower of the network.
Now I am losing you. The difficulty that exists is based to an average 10 minutes, from prior 2016
blocks. This can help estimate the networks hash rate. The nonce is based on this "combined
hashpower of the network". This is my understanding. Are you talking about "luck"?
each pool makes their own effort. and the "75%" [others] mentioned [as threshold] is not 1 pools.
No, I know that, but the 75% is still trying to find the nonce with the difficultly that assumes the
missing 25% would filling in the time gaps and balance the blocks back to 10 minutes on average.
In theory, over a 24 hour day with 144 blocks each around 10 minutes, if 25% "dropped off", then
over the same amount of 24 hours, the 75% should only be able to mine about 115 blocks. Until the
difficultly readjustment, that loss in block work will compound, which leads to less supply of new coins,
regular txs, and fees would be slowed and restricted.
here this image will make it a bit clearer
as you can see 75% of blocks is just HALF the network hashrate in this example,(top half of image) but the block
timings still are reasonable whichever way you play it(bottom half when they have split)
...
I'm not following now. are you saying that if 75% of the hash power leaves the competition,
that does not affect the remaining 25% to find blocks within the average 10 minutes over time?
What is the significance of this in relation to my comment that this was a response to?
I'm not following.