Author: Mark Friedenbach 2017-10-11 04:08:52
Published on: 2017-10-11T04:08:52+00:00
The proposal to deploy a hard fork to bitcoin in the event of a 51% attack is unlikely to be helpful. If deployed, there would now be two altcoins fighting to take hashpower from bitcoin instead of one. Changing the difficulty adjustment algorithm does not solve the underlying issue of hashpower not being aligned with users' interests. The thesis and value proposition of bitcoin is that economic incentives can be used to create a secure trustless ledger. If these incentives fail, then the project has failed experimentally. A rushed, poorly reviewed hard fork like B2X should not be repeated, rather hard forks should receive more expert and community review. The proposed solution to the problem caused by miners seeking maximum profit without due regard for security, users and nodes is a hard fork to implement a new difficulty algorithm. This would involve using a simple rolling average with a much smaller window and adjusting the reward based on recent solvetimes to motivate more mining or less if the solvetimes are too slow or fast. This will keep coin issuance rate perfectly on schedule with real time. However, this proposal requires peer review before it is implemented.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T21:34:53.163288+00:00