Author: Eric Lombrozo 2015-09-28 12:20:31
Published on: 2015-09-28T12:20:31+00:00
The discussion revolves around the difference between soft and hard forks in Bitcoin. Soft forks are miner-enforced rule changes that can be enforced without the consensus of anyone else. The only "voting" system available to Bitcoin that cannot be trivially attacked is hashing power. The mechanism has some issues, but as long as the majority of hashpower enforces the new rule, attempts to redeem the output will never end up on the blockchain, making transactions invalid. Eric proposes making these rule changes explicit in BIPs and believes it is important that people weigh in on such rule changes. Mike Hearn objects to soft forks since there is no consensus. He argues that losing the requirement that everyone agrees for consensus changes and changing the spec or doing nothing would be better options. However, he also acknowledges that the rationale of "backwards compatibility" is well known, yet wrong.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T23:16:24.532455+00:00