Author: Jonathan Toomim (Toomim Bros) 2015-09-29 14:17:35
Published on: 2015-09-29T14:17:35+00:00
Gavin Andresen, a well-known Bitcoin developer, discussed the possibility of hard forks in an email thread on September 29, 2015. He questioned the feasibility of Toomim Bros' statement that those opposed to a hard fork can continue to use the old version successfully as long as there are enough miners to keep the fork alive. Gavin argued that if there was a hard fork and 5% of miners refused to go along with the 95% majority, it would cause a huge free-fall in price as people rush to get free money by selling their coins on the smaller fork. He further explained how he could create a send-to-self transaction on the 95% fork that is only valid on the same chain but could still transfer the same coins to the 5% exchange and sell them for whatever price he could get while owning the coins on the 95% fork. At the 95% threshold, hard forks are not likely to happen unless there was a strong motivating factor like a conspiracy theory. However, at the 75% threshold, hard forks could occur with mostly rational users, especially with contentious issues such as block size. Some people may be religious about things like decentralization or fee markets and believe that even 1 MB is too large. They may make financial sacrifices to try to make a small-block parallel fork a reality, one that is true to their vision of what's needed to make Bitcoin pure. In conclusion, Gavin's arguments highlight the challenges and potential risks associated with hard forks in the Bitcoin network. While some users may support smaller forks due to ideological reasons, this may lead to a significant loss in value and transaction backlog for the smaller fork.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T23:27:34.256652+00:00