Author: Tier Nolan 2017-09-15 11:47:32
Published on: 2017-09-15T11:47:32+00:00
In a discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Adam Back and ZmnSCPxj discussed the possibility of preventing soft forks. According to ZmnSCPxj, it is impossible to prevent soft forks entirely, as there are too many potential scriptPubKey that anyone can spend. Additionally, he notes that it is possible for a majority of miners to run soft-forking code which the rest of the community is not privy to. However, if the userbase doesn't support a censorship soft fork, it will only last as long as a majority of miners support it. Once the cartel loses its majority, members have a strong incentive to disable their soft fork rule. Users updating their nodes to enforce the soft fork is what makes the soft fork irreversible without a hard fork. Adam adds that in principle, a soft fork can be soft-forked out, meaning that a publicly known soft fork done by miners only that user node software did not upgrade for first by opt-in adoption. It depends on what software that the general user-base is using (especially exchanges). If a majority of miners have deployed a hidden soft fork, then the soft fork will only last as long as they can maintain their majority. If they drop below 50%, then the majority of miners will eventually make and then build on a block that is invalid according to their hidden soft fork rules. ZmnSCPxj further explains that soft forks apply further restrictions on Bitcoin, whereas hard forks do not. Thus, if everyone else is entering a soft fork and the community is oblivious, they would not even know about it. Whereas, if everyone else is entering a hard fork, invalid transactions and blocks would immediately be seen and rejected. Therefore, the only way to prevent a soft fork is to hard fork against the new soft fork.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T18:45:57.213734+00:00