Author: Hector Chu 2015-08-01 08:43:56
Published on: 2015-08-01T08:43:56+00:00
In an email conversation between Gregory Maxwell and another individual, the possibility of intentionally causing a split in a blockchain was discussed. While it is possible to intentionally split coins between separate forks, there seems to be little incentive for anyone to do so since the coins would no longer be fungible across the chains and would thus be worth less. However, it was noted that new coins and fees would be issued on both chains, which could lead to difficulty in avoiding this fact. Transactions that are associated with one chain only can exist exclusively on that chain, and someone with single-chain coins can pay small amounts to many users to get their wallets to consume them and make more transactions single chain-only. Regarding migration of miners to the bigger chain, it was suggested that they would migrate to the chain with higher profits due to a higher volume of fees. However, the migration remark was deemed an oversimplification, as demonstrated by the hypothetical scenario of someone releasing software programmed to reassign ownership of a million unmoved coins to themselves at a certain block and then making transactions to pay high fees. In this case, miners may not move over immediately as they would need to see the new chain gain acceptance through higher trading volume.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T18:00:56.244601+00:00