Author: jl2012 at xbt.hk 2015-09-28 16:52:51
Published on: 2015-09-28T16:52:51+00:00
In a bitcoin-dev post, Mike Hearn argues that miners can and do bypass IsStandard without expecting financial consequences or lowering the security of other users. He believes that accidents that carry financial consequences will increase if non-standard transactions result in blocks being viewed as invalid. Bypassing IsStandard should be considered an "expert mode". Miners are paid to protect the network and must follow development and keep their software up to date. In response to a question about the benefits of the soft fork rollout strategy for ordinary Bitcoin users, it is explained that non-mining full nodes benefit from soft forks as they will follow the majority chain. A hard fork, on the other hand, would force non-upgrading full nodes to follow the minority chain. Soft forks allow for a persistent 95% attack against the old fork, which forces all incorporating miners to join or leave. In contrast, hard forks have no mechanism to stop the old fork, resulting in potentially long periods where two chains co-exist. The ability to soft fork is a feature of Bitcoin, although it is not mentioned in the whitepaper.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T23:13:11.054683+00:00