Author: Eric Voskuil 2017-03-07 18:13:36
Published on: 2017-03-07T18:13:36+00:00
The discussion in the email thread revolves around the possibility of a hashpower activated soft fork to censor transactions in response to a user activated soft fork that the majority of hashpower disagrees with. Edmund suggested that a set of users forcing miners to do something is silly, and that it is equally silly for a minority miner fraction to force the majority to do something, as the majority mining hashpower can fight back against this attack upon them. A hash-minority attacking the hash-majority is an attack on Bitcoin as a whole, and if possible, governments would try to push through changes in the same UASF way, which would be the end of Bitcoin's freedom and decentralized nature. A POW hard fork may be accompanied by a difficulty reset so that deployment does not have both problems from the outset. However, it is not clear how the assumption of a loss of security in the short term is something that can be overcome, as the short term can prevent the long term from ever becoming. The discussion also highlights that Bitcoin only works when the majority of the hashpower and the economic majority of users are balanced in power and have their goals aligned. If the majority of users reject blocks that the miners create or change the POW, then what the miners bring to the table is also removed. Bitcoin would lose the security and, in the short term, even the ability to mine blocks every 10 minutes.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T21:54:19.654391+00:00