Author: Jannes Faber 2016-05-11 10:47:58
Published on: 2016-05-11T10:47:58+00:00
The discussion on bitcoin-dev mailing list revolved around whether banning AsicBoost is likely to cause a hard fork, and the implications of such a fork. The concern was that it would be difficult to tell if a block was mined with AsicBoost or not, so there is no way to know what percentage of the hashrate uses AsicBoost at any given time. Timo Hanke argued that banning AsicBoost could result in a guaranteed chain fork, since some percentage of hardware will no longer be able to produce valid blocks after the block mining algorithm is changed. Jannes Faber disagreed, stating that assuming AsicBoost miners are in the minority, their chain will constantly get overtaken until they stop making AsicBoost blocks. He also argued that even if AsicBoost miners decide to ban non-AsicBoost blocks as a response to being banned themselves, they would simply become another altcoin with a different Proof of Work (PoW) and no reason for anyone to use them over Bitcoin. Additionally, he clarified that "longest" in terms of blockchain length is not just determined by the number of blocks, but rather by the aggregate difficulty of the chain. Therefore, AsicBoost would never become longer, and the concern about a hard fork resulting from banning AsicBoost may be unfounded.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T05:18:14.681522+00:00