Author: David A. Harding 2016-03-02 17:14:28
Published on: 2016-03-02T17:14:28+00:00
In March 2016, Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr proposed a hard fork to the difficulty adjustment algorithm to adapt more quickly to a significant drop in mining rate. Another developer suggested that a soft fork may be able to handle the situation instead. The idea is to require valid block header hashes to be X% below the target value indicated by nBits, with X% changing with each block starting at 0% and increasing to 50% just before block 420,000 (the halving). This would force some miners off the network before the halving in small numbers, rather than all at once. The proposal also raises ethical concerns, as Alice and Bob may have invested money and time on the assumption that their marginal hardware would be usable up until the halving, but the soft fork would make them uneconomical earlier than block 420,000. However, supporters argue that such an investment was always speculative given the vagaries of exchange rate fluctuation, and it could be permissible to change the economics slightly to help ensure all other Bitcoin users experience minimal disruption during the halving. The proposal has the advantage of fast rollout if the mechanism of an adjusted target is simple enough.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T04:17:30.389296+00:00