Author: Jorge Timón 2015-08-19 09:47:22
Published on: 2015-08-19T09:47:22+00:00
In an email exchange on August 18th, 2015, various members of the Bitcoin community discussed the issue of a potential hard fork within the cryptocurrency. The conversation begins with NxtChg via bitcoin-dev stating that there must be a split in governance as decentralized currencies cannot be governed by centralized entities. Nobody had yet complained about Bitcoin-XT or other alternative implementations of bitcoin. However, people are worried about the schism hardfork rather than the software fork which happened long ago when some of Hearn's changes were reverted due to security concerns.The discussion then shifts towards consensus rules and the idea of Bitcoin Core losing its privileged position as the specification of the consensus rules. Instead, by separating libconsensus, Bitcoin Core would become just a reference implementation that is not “consensus-safer” compared to alternative implementations. While it is acknowledged that hard forks may be unavoidable at some point, there are still many reasons to fear schism hardforks.One member of the group states that if a reliable process for hard forks cannot be established, there is no decentralized Bitcoin and everyone might as well give up and go home. Overall, the conversation suggests that while a hard fork may be necessary for the future of Bitcoin, there are still concerns and fears around the potential consequences of such a split.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T20:01:59.078920+00:00