Author: Dan Libby 2017-09-15 19:55:56
Published on: 2017-09-15T19:55:56+00:00
The possibility of creating a cryptocurrency with immutable consensus rules was discussed in the Bitcoin Protocol Discussion mailing list. The goal of this hypothetical cryptocurrency would be to offer investors great certainty and predictability by being a long-term store of value that does not change its consensus rules. Hard forks are always possible, but they require people to opt-in, whereas soft forks drag people along with them. Soft forks rely on anyone-can-spend transactions, and removing them could effectively prevent soft-forks, but there are other possible mechanisms. It is impossible to prevent soft-forks entirely, as miners can run secret soft-fork code, which the rest of us are not privy to. Soft-forks apply further restrictions on Bitcoin, while hard forks do not. Thus, the only way to prevent a soft fork is to hard fork against it. To make a cryptocurrency immune to soft-forks, it would have to restrict all transactions to isStandard at the consensus layer. However, this may prevent new features from being added via soft-forks, and Satoshi's unused opcodes may eventually run out, making it impossible to add new opcodes without a hard-fork.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T18:45:30.859984+00:00