Author: Pieter Wuille 2015-05-07 21:49:28
Published on: 2015-05-07T21:49:28+00:00
In the world of Bitcoin, a hardfork is considered safe only when all economically relevant users upgrade. If miners fail to upgrade, they stand to lose money. In this context, a hashrate-triggered hardfork does not make sense as it either presumes that everyone will upgrade anyway and thus the hashrate doesn't matter, or it is risky regardless of the hashrate upgrades. The march 2013 fork demonstrated that miners upgraded at a different schedule than the rest of the network. If 99.99% of miners updated but only 75% of merchants and users did so, it would lead to a serious split in the network. However, if consensus rules required a 99% supermajority of miners for the hard fork to go ahead, merchants and users would have no rational reason to refuse upgrading even if they do not support the introduced changes. Their only choice in case of a successful fork would be to choose between the active chain and the one that is effectively stalled.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T20:13:02.386341+00:00