Author: Aymeric Vitte 2017-04-06 22:29:51
Published on: 2017-04-06T22:29:51+00:00
The discussion is centered around the impact of a hard-fork on the Bitcoin network. Sergio Demian Lerner argues that the nodes should not be disregarded in favor of miners, as they are integral to the functioning of the network. He asserts that if the original blockchain hard-forks to re-adjust the difficulty, it will simply represent an alt-coin having 5% of the Bitcoin community and cannot affect Bitcoin (the segwit2mb fork). However, if the nodes do not upgrade and just implement the patch to adjust the difficulty, there will be a 95% mining power chain with "no" nodes and a 5% one with "all" the nodes, which would destroy the entire system. Lerner further explains that the 95% miner signaling is important to prevent two Bitcoin forks, such as what happened with Ethereum HF and Ethereum Classic. Hard-forks are conditional to 95% of the hashing power approving the segwit2mb soft-fork and the segwit soft-fork being activated. If 100% of the hash power indicates they are running this proposal, but the nodes do not upgrade, it could lead to disastrous consequences for the network. Lerner emphasizes on the slow difficulty re-targeting algorithm of Bitcoin and explains that a fork that has just 95% miner support will initially (for 2016 blocks) be 5% slower, and the transaction capacity of the new Bitcoin protocol is reduced only 5%. However, the chain with 5% of the hashing power not only has a 20x capacity reduction, but confirms transactions in 20x more time. The mempool will grow 400 times. Therefore, fees will increase multiple times, and users may not want to pay high transaction fees for such a slow and insecure network. In conclusion, Lerner believes that scaling full nodes is still something you need very powerful glasses to see coming, and the trend of disconsidering nodes compared to miners is not going to revert. He provides links to his GitHub profile and several projects he has worked on related to Zcash wallets, Bitcoin wallets, dynamic blocklists, and private torrents.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T23:07:32.453269+00:00