Author: Peter Todd 2015-08-04 21:29:56
Published on: 2015-08-04T21:29:56+00:00
In a message sent to the bitcoin-dev mailing list in August 2015, Jorge Timón raised the issue of whether miners' upgrade confirmation is necessary for uncontroversial hard forks. The message states that without a strong supermajority of miner support, the fork risks attack. It suggests requiring 95% approval as a minimum safety requirement, as this would provide a 50% majority vote, enabling the majority to squelch the minority. The message also mentions Hearn's proposal of using centralised checkpoints to override PoW consensus but highlights legal issues with this option. The message goes on to suggest that miners have a number of options to defeat forks without miner approval, such as making their own fork with a new consensus algorithm that requires miners to prove they're attacking the unwanted chain. This would mean that even if a fork were uncontroversial, it could still be attacked by miners. Garzik's recent 2MB blocks proposal is given as an example of such a design, with the original Bitcoin protocol rules having the effect of attacking the Garzik 2MB chain.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T04:20:56.595884+00:00