Bitcoin Forum

On [this medium post](https://medium.com/@nicolasdorier/hf-and-sf-for-libertarians-1c8d4b68372d#.la65bgj4h), I maintained the following:

• A soft fork can't violate the Non Aggression Principle (NAP)
• A hard fork does not either, but service provider might violate it if not being careful by switching chain without your consent

On twitter piotr seemed to disagree, given the 140 limits I want to better discuss it here.

forks are raping the network's integrity.

whether you like it hard or soft doesnt matter.

either way a solution is needed, bitcoin can not resolve its issue without at least a soft fork, and it's not like there were not multiple soft or hard fork in the past

and the network despite those fork, is still alive and kicking, so this is hypocrisy...

You can't believe that what you said is true without at the same time believing users should have the right to force miner which transaction to put into their blocks.

A soft fork is only about miners agreeing to add rules to what they consider a valid transaction. As long as you think miners are free to choose the transactions in their block, then you support soft fork.

Wat? users incentivize miners to put this or that transaction into their block by actually paying a fee.

Soft fork gives colluded miners the power to bend the protocol rules according to this or that centrally planned agreement. And by doing so they shamelessly cheat the network's integrity to enforce non backward compatible rules that will furthermore maliciously blend in along with the transactions they proceed.

Protocol change must be universally agreed upon by the whole network to be legit. Bitcoin isnt about playing politicians here, with roundtables and bribes or what not. Soft forks are a devious way to contort the rules without consensus. If you were so confident about the relevance of the VC market pull "upgrades" you are so eager to shove down the protocol's throat, then you should propose a hard fork it and see how your altcoin goes.

Sorry to be late to respond, got problems with my PC lately.


Correct. But it does not mean a miner HAS to accept your transaction, even if you paid the fee. The fee does not give you the right to force a miner to mine it.


You must distinguish between protocol rules, consensus rules impacting nodes and consensus rules impacting miners.

Protocol rules is made by the node's developers. (xthin, cmpctblock, getutxo, bloom filters or whatever)
Consensus rules impacting nodes need universal agreement, as if it does not, a split of currency can happens.
Consensus rules impacting miners does not need agreement, as the miners were ALWAYS in possession of which transaction they decide to mine in the first place.

If you think a SF is wrong whatever the reason, you should find a way to enforce it in a decentralized manner, and this mean that you must find a way to make it impossible for miners to see anything more than fees in the transaction.
Interestingly, you can implement that in a SF. :)

Taming of the shrew, wow