Author: David Chan 2015-12-30 17:58:44
Published on: 2015-12-30T17:58:44+00:00
The referred document discusses the concept of soft forks and hard forks in the context of Bitcoin. Soft forks with over 50% support will eventually orphan the other fork, while hard forks could persist forever. The logic behind why a majority will win in a soft fork but not necessarily in a hard fork is unclear. A notable difference between the two is the process by which they force the other fork to be orphaned. In a hard fork, an unupgraded node would recognize the forking situation through receiving many invalid blocks from the other fork. Conversely, in a generalized soft fork, you wouldn't know there was a fork going on, so there would be less of an impetus to upgrade. This raises questions about network security, as non-upgraded miners may start mining on top of a block that they cannot fully validate, condoning mining without verification and potentially hurting network security. The discussion pertains to non-mining nodes, so any potential financial losses due to orphan chains should not come into consideration. The definition of soft forks is subjective, with different names suggested for the approach described in the document.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T02:53:47.676027+00:00