Author: Tamas Blummer 2015-08-20 14:25:21
Published on: 2015-08-20T14:25:21+00:00
The proof of work (POW) is the current mechanism for voting on the valid chain continuation, however, it is not an ideal voting mechanism as ideally all validators, non-mining full nodes, SPV users and those with investments in their cold wallet would have a vote. Before XT, Bitcoin was evolved through discussions and informal consensus among those with commit access to GitHub, however, now it is suggested that the decision should be replaced with a POW vote using XT. The potential problems with both approaches are evident and if XT comes closer to miner majority, validators will also be forced to take a side. Entrepreneurs may choose XT if Core has no comparable offer to scale transactions per second, which could set the stage for the perfect hard fork storm. Despite these issues, the idea of Bitcoin is considered powerful enough to weather any storm. Security in Bitcoin is provided via POW, but this is only one aspect of security and the security of Bitcoin as a system is a complex subject that involves a number of factors resulting from human actions.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T19:39:37.247777+00:00