Author: Pieter Wuille 2015-06-20 18:11:53
Published on: 2015-06-20T18:11:53+00:00
In an email conversation between David Vorick and Pieter Wuille, the topic of hard forks and node upgrades was discussed. Vorick expressed his belief that it is unreasonable to expect all nodes to upgrade during a hard fork, as an extreme minority of nodes could hold the rest of the network hostage by refusing to upgrade. He suggested that nodes should have the ability to protest until it is clear they have lost the battle without being at risk of getting hard forked out of the network unexpectedly. Wuille countered that while it may be unreasonable to expect every single node to upgrade, there is a difference between ignoring old unmaintained nodes that do not influence anyone's behavior and ignoring the nodes powering miners that produce actual blocks. He also noted that having no blocks on the old chain is safer than producing a small number, as it causes full nodes that have not noticed the fork to fail rather than see a slow but otherwise functional chain. Wuille assumed a completely uncontroversial change in order to avoid confusing the discussion with the debate about what hard forks should be done.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T20:48:45.025391+00:00