Author: Jefferson Carpenter 2018-01-19 20:54:52
Published on: 2018-01-19T20:54:52+00:00
A proposal has been made to fork off a blockchain that accepts Bitcoin blocks with less than max difficulty, making it a soft fork. Additionally, if the difficulty of a block is set to max, then the difficulty field is extended so that it represents a higher max difficulty under a different hashing function like SHA512, making it a hard fork. This blockchain will be identical to Bitcoin until the difficulty goes too high, at which point it diverges. However, transitioning from the current SHA256 to a higher-difficulty hashing function could be difficult. On 1/17/2018, Jefferson Carpenter wrote that Bitcoin's difficulty will be maxed out within about 400 years by Moore's law. After that, block time will start decreasing, and it will not take long before blocks are mined faster than photons can be sent across the planet. He suggests planning today for what to do when Bitcoin finally breaks 400 years from now, to mitigate potential losses. There are currently no distinct plans for migrating to a PoW supporting even higher difficulty.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T23:54:54.591241+00:00