Author: Jorge Timón 2015-09-30 20:37:08
Published on: 2015-09-30T20:37:08+00:00
In a discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Mike Hearn argued against Jorge's claim that soft forks always lead to network convergence. He stated that instead of a single divergence that occurs until everyone upgrades (as with a hard fork), soft forks result in constant mini divergences until everyone has upgraded. However, Hearn also noted that the quantity of invalid blocks mined is identical between both types of forks.Hearn went on to explain that these "mini divergences" eventually disappear, assuming that the majority of the hashrate has upgraded and non-upgraded miners accept the upgraded blocks as valid. In contrast, the "single divergence" in a hard fork keeps growing forever unless all miners eventually upgrade. Therefore, Hearn argued that soft forks maintain eventual consistency while hard forks do not.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T23:18:38.896859+00:00