Bitcoin Forum

Do we need to upgrade to bitcoin XT right now ?

No, why should we need to? :)

You don't ever NEED to switch to Bitcoin XT unless or until you want to.

When the fork , is it totally idfferent 2 chains ? or same chain ?

If a blockchain fork ever happens, and there is no guarantee that it ever will, then there would be two chains that are EXACTLY IDENTICAL up to the forking block.  Then after the forking block, the chains would be completely different forever.  Any unspent transaction outputs that exist in blocks from before the fork would be valid on BOTH blockchains.  Unspent outputs that are created in blocks after the fork will generally only exist in that specific blockchain (although in some special instances might still exist in both blockchains).

U dont need to, until proven otherwise; since the fork will happen (if it does at all) when 90% of the network is on XT chain.
On the other side, you can go on XT right now, it wouldnt made any difference, and if the fork happens, you wouldn't have to switch clients again.
imho,  its a "nothing to loose, nothing to gain" situation, since i doubt the fork will happen anyways.

cheers

No need yet! Bitcoin XT doesn't change anything about block size limits at the moment. It is more experimental than Bitcoin Core, and focuses on supporting the needs of app developers and merchants. As an individual we could wait later announcement. Besides that, Bitcoin XT is not recommended to download yet officially at the bitcointalk.org yet.

So when is date for BitcoinXT will occur on the network ?
I mean the fork.

they estimate a date around march 1 2016, but they will talk about it in the future before the changes will kick in

nothing is guaranteed at the moment

So the chain that is controlled by 51% of total nodes will win?
In other words, if 51% nodes decide to move to XT wallet, the other 49% will also be forced to move to XT?

@eXpl0sive

dont worry about that stuff - make sure you dont get hacked and lose your coins that way. that is the real danger  :-*

No, against popular opinion, the fork will in this case happen if and when 90% of the nodes are XT ones, not 51% of them. So it's wrong to say anyone will be "forced" to switch to XT.
imho this fork is a good one, and i sure hope the majority of the network switches to XT and we have a new fork.

cheers

Can someone explain why we're still talking about the XT fork? Is the BIP 100 not ideal for some reason I am missing? I don't even see any threads about it on the forums: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/39kzyt/draft_bip_100_soft_fork_block_size_increase/

That depends on what you mean by "controlled by" and what the creators of Bitcoin XT decide to do.


No.


No.

It is not possible to accurately count how many "nodes" there are.  None of this is based on any percentage of nodes.

Right now the creators of Bitcoin XT are stating that they will wait for 90% of the economic power to switch to Bitcoin XT compatible wallets before their Bitcoin XT wallet will accept a larger (and therefore fork inducing) block.  It is possible that they could change their minds and modify Bitcoin XT to accept larger blocks sooner, but I feel that is very unlikey.

I believe when they say "90% of the economic power" they are generally talking about 90% of the hash power (and therefore 90% of the blocks in the blockchain), although I think they have talked about getting some of the merchants that handle the largest amount of bitcoins (such as Coinbase, BitPay, and Circle) to switch before increasing the block size as well.

If, for some reason, they decide to allow Bitcoin XT to accept larger blocks when only a little bit more than 50% of the hash power is using Bitcoin XT compatible software, then there will be two blockchains.  There would be no "winning" and nobody would be "forced" to switch if they didn't want to.  Instead, each blockchain would act like its own cryptocurrency, and you'd have to check with each merchant (or any individual) before you sent them anything to find out which bitcoin they are using.  In that situation, many merchants might choose to accept transactions on both blockchains until one chain reaches an economic superiority.

Those are all just ideas to solve the same problem. Some may lip the BIP 100, others want a 20MB hardfork, other 8...
At the end of the day the average Bitcoin user doesn't need to worry about this. If a hardfork happens, your coins will be availible in whatever new blockchain that appears after the fork, and the coins will also be availible in the original pre-fork blockchain, so no worries.

That is very nice. Just after the fork I will sell my bitcoins on both blockchains and will get twice the money.
Just hope the price will not fall too fast.

Most likely the exchanges and payment processors will adopt only 1 of the chains. Therefore, it is unlikely you will be able to spend the coins on both of the chains.

This has been about the worst thing that has happened in the history of Bitcoin IMO.

The best we can hope for is that the 90% acceptance level won't be "changed" and the worst that could happen is basically going to hurt Bitcoin more than anything else ever has.

I really feel like Pandoras box have been opened here, and it cannot be closed again.
For the first time in a long time am I really concern about bitcoins future.
When I say "bitcoin" I mean what people will think of as real bitcoins in the future.
I fear we will have two version of bitcoin and that would be really bad for mass adoptation.

this is the end.




 

Yes, that make me feel stupid.
Take 3-4 years to convince merchant to adopt bitcoin, now they have to upgrade HDD , to upgrade the whole system for new block chain.
That will be stupid for new chain.

it's not so different than asking to merchants that are still running xp, to upgrade to seven, who is not willing to adapt will remain behind

if they are not willing to update they can't understand the importance of this upgrade

You will probably want to upgrade before the winter months when new checkpoints could begin segmenting the network.

Checkpoint update >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=99&v=DB9goUDBAR0

Up until now I have always had complete faith in Bitcoin, even with all of the hacks and bad publicity, and the massive year and a half long price decline. Now I am not so sure. The block size problem seams as though it may be the last straw. I just don't see how Bitcoin can survive intact after this, no matter which way it goes. There are too many egos, and ulterior motives involved for a strong Bitcoin to emerge on the other side.

I'm definitely not the most technically literate guy here, but CIYAM might be........
I do have experience of wrangling NXT thru a hard fork, and even on NXTs small scale (with a very tight-knit community) it's not all that easy.
A competitive Bitcoin hard fork sounds like no fun at all.

And, just for the lulz:
Bitcoin XT.......BitcoiN XT......BitcoiNXT....NXT. Good decision......

Doesn't matter.

If anyone stands in the way of honey badger, honey badger just eats through their torso and out the other side. In other words, if it became clear to the larger community of investors, infrastructure owners, and luminaries that some of the devs were obstructing changes for political or other irrelevant reasons, someone in the community - maybe Gavin, maybe anyone - will create a fork with the required changes and after deliberation and testing the vast majority would adopt it.

Personalities cannot stop Bitcoin. If they try, they just get left behind coding for a worthless fork. Investors are who is in control (http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/who-controls-bitcoin/).

Or look at it this way, in what other system in the world do people debate so carefully and thoroughly, so far in advance, about such relatively minor changes that hypothetically might cause a temporary issue? The answer is, only in the most important, civilization-wide mission-critical systems. This should tell you how big of a thing Bitcoin is. This level of debate shows the world we're very serious and are thinking through every nook and cranny of possibility to ensure that this baby grows up to take on the world.

Don't confuse vigorous debate, posturing, and alarmism for gridlock. These things are inevitable because of how much money is on the line. Gavin already agreed to a smaller increase like Peter Todd wanted and to Jeff Garzik's proposal. Consensus is not far away, and a little nudge from full blocks and some pain of backlog will be all that is needed to push through a modest increase, after which the precedent will have been set against the radical "1MB forever" people, so that will be out of the way, and also we'll have better data to argue from. For example, if the new block space soon fills up with spam, we'll know we need to optimize via fees instead next time, and if node count doesn't go down much and large miners don't trample smaller miners then the centralization argument sputters out.

You are right. But what if china deny the fork, there are strong voices for that, i have read? You would end up with having exchanges that accept one coin and exchanges that accept the other coin as the valid one. You could sell your coin on each of these exchanges and you would not risk that one coin is losing value.

Am i wrong? I think the voices are really not so united and i think thats risky.

I am totally against changing anything, on any coin, unless it is ABSOLUTELY Necessary.

The whole thing about crypto, is supposed to be that you can count on crypto not changing the rules in the middle of the game like Fiat does.

HOWEVER, like I said, if it is ABSOLUTELY Necessary to make a change, than there really is no other option. Or an option that will cause the coin not to work as it has been, LIKE THIS SITUATION!!!

As long as they are not adding to the total amount of coins, or doing a "rollback" and changing the past, because the in the past there was a hack, etc, and essentially creating a new coin, then the change is fine.

A change needs to be made in this case. There are smart, competent people handling it.

Bitcoin will be just fine BECAUSE of the change in this case.

In before rekt.  I still hold BTC, but slowly shifting to LTC.  But I feel iffy holding just LTC.  Please suggest a coin for me to hold...  What are the better PoW coins?

Litecoin seems to me a poor choice in this context because it has a similar max blocksize problem as Bitcoin. Kind of like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. The same issue is present in many POW alt-coins because for the most part they were cloned from Bitcoin and kept the fixed blocksize limit in the process. The notable exceptions are the Cryptonote coins of which the most liquid is Monero.

Edit: I expect Bitcoin to eventually deal with the 1 MB blocksize limit after some turmoil, which is why I still hold some Bitcoin.

I'm holding LTC (and other coins soon, preferably POW) temporarily until everything is settled with BTC's current dilemma.  Mike Hearn did mention BTC could get wrecked, and that scared me.

where did he mention it could get wrecked? I mean, btc could die any time, everyone should be able to grasp this possibility... but did Mike Hearn say specifically that the switch to 20mb blocks could destroy btc? it could, but monkeys could fly out my butt too.

EDIT- just saw this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1089283.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1089283.0) after posting here... I get it, but it is worst case scenario, meaning pretty much what I already said... it might, but might is the could of maybe-land... probably wont.

The saying of .... United we stand, divided we fall ...comes to mind here.  ::)

I see this as a "power game" ...When Satoshi was still here, he made all the decisions... He moved on... a power void was created.

We now have a Core development team, with no dominant leadership... This is a issue for some, and they decided to hard fork to get their own toy to dominate.

This is the worst part for Bitcoin ... You have Core developers from both sides competing against each other, instead of working together for one goal.

You don't "need" to switch to Bitcoin XT. It is a voluntary action taken by users who want to show support for increasing the block size limit.