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Bitcoin => Development & Technical Discussion => Topic started by: uminatsu on May 17, 2015, 03:40:30 AM



Title: proposal to avoid hardfork by perma-freezing old nodes
Post by: uminatsu on May 17, 2015, 03:40:30 AM
If the majority of nodes agree that for all blocks after block #N (e.g. 400000) the only valid block must contain only the coinbase transaction with zero block reward, and with a alt-block hash attached to the coinbase message, where the alt-block hash is the hash of the block in blockchain 2.0 (transmitted separately), then it is technically only a soft fork because the set of valid blocks accepted by new nodes is a strict subset of that accepted by old nodes. The old nodes will be forced to accept a perma-frozen blockchain where no new coins are generated and no transactions will confirm.


Title: Re: proposal to avoid hardfork by perma-freezing old nodes
Post by: jl2012 on May 17, 2015, 03:44:07 AM
If the majority of nodes agree that for all blocks after block #N (e.g. 400000) the only valid block must contain only the coinbase transaction with zero block reward, and with a alt-block hash attached to the coinbase message, where the alt-block hash is the hash of the block in blockchain 2.0 (transmitted separately), then it is technically only a soft fork because the set of valid blocks accepted by new nodes is a strict subset of that accepted by old nodes. The old nodes will be forced to accept a perma-frozen blockchain where no new coins are generated and no transactions will confirm.

You are right but this is quite obvious and not a new idea


Title: Re: proposal to avoid hardfork by perma-freezing old nodes
Post by: uminatsu on May 17, 2015, 04:38:27 AM
Yes I agree this is quite obvious and probably not a new idea, but given the ongoing debate on block size limits I wonder if this proposal is an acceptable solution. It certainly motivates old nodes to update.