Author: Luke-Jr 2013-12-17 22:50:24
Published on: 2013-12-17T22:50:24+00:00
In this email thread, Troy Benjegerdes discusses the concept of merging two different forks in cryptocurrency, similar to how it is done in distributed version control systems. He poses a hypothetical scenario where he and his friends are "islanded" from the rest of the internet for a week but still want to trade Bitcoin. In this scenario, a miner would look at the forked blockchain and include both chains if no double-spends were detected. However, if there is a merge conflict due to a buggy client or a transaction resulting in a double-spend before disconnect, then a MERGE request with a transaction fee sufficient to cover reconciling the double-spends would be broadcasted to incentivize miners to do extra work to merge.Luke expresses concern about the incentives of this proposal, stating that it may give miners reasons to avoid including transactions and people reason to double-spend. Additionally, the email does not address how to deal with the subsidy - whether both miners get it or not.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T22:34:24.805307+00:00