Bitcoin Forum

How probable is a contentious Hard-fork in the next few months?

Are you doing anything to prepare for the coming shit-storm?

If BU had the economic majority behind them, they would have forked ages ago.

When you have the power (by power, in this instance, I mean support of the economic majority), you don't need to talk, you just do.

So, how crazy are the pool operators who supposedly support BU? Time will tell.

Miners have all advantage in keeping the number of transactions a scarce resource, as every product with inelastic offer for which there is large demand can rise very high in price.    So, miners don't really like scaling solutions.  The (idiotic) fact that block sizes have been limited to very small sizes (1MB), hard coded in the protocol, is an unexpected but lucrative benefit to them, especially when block rewards fall.
On the other hand, miners don't want the market value of the coin they are mining, to be affected.  They are probably potentially ready to scale the amount of transactions if otherwise the coin becomes worthless.  But I think that this is actually not a driving force.  For the moment, block rewards are still the principal revenue, but fees are making up about 20% of the miner revenue.  As such, a scaling solution that would bring down the tension on the fee market would need to rise the bitcoin price by more than 20% for this to be attractive to miners. 

Chances are that fees will only increase over the coming months.  Suppose that fees represent similar amounts of income than block rewards.  Miners would only be favourable to scaling, if they were convinced that bitcoin's market value would DOUBLE because of the scaling.  This is not the case, because bitcoin's price is NOT mainly determined by small on-chain transactions, but rather by off-chain (exchange) trading.  So I can't see miners ever be favourable to any scaling solution.

I think miners "support" BU mainly to counter segwit.  Their idea is most rationally NOT to provide a scaling solution, unless they are convinced that bitcoin's market price suffers *significantly* from that non-scaling, which, as markets show us, is absolutely not the case.

As you say, most traders involved in price speculation are trading off chain IOU's. The real market effect might not have twigged on yet, or might be severely constrained if you look at BTC crypto market cap % share falling.

I don't think it will happen until late summer or fall.

If this bip is approved and implemented, expect it to be all over by the end of summer.

https://gist.github.com/shaolinfry/743157b0b1ee14e1ddc95031f1057e4c

Oh no, that can't be right, haven't you noticed the massive flood of "real" bitcoiners in the forums, loudly shouting about how they represent the 99% of Bitcoin users who are all BU supporters fed up of Core/Blockstream holding Bitcoin back?

The 99% have wanted BU and every big blocks fork (XT, Classic etc) since the first day 1MB was enacted, you can tell because whenever BU put out their latest release, it immediately becomes the dominant version on the netwo... hang on, there's something wrong with this logic......

Maybe. I do not know I guess it could happen, so let's see what is interesting in the future there is the best scenario at this bitcoin :)

I am completely against hard fork, we don't need two bitcoin network and i hope we will not see any hard fork in near future just because of block size issue. Community is divided between segwit and unlimited, but segwit is better solution without need of hard fork.

Some people disagree with that statement. SegWit for them is a private altcoin and backdoor trojan horse of Blockstream.
If SegWit was that great to being with, then why community is bashing it so hard and BU is gaining more hash support everyday?
As far as I know even Litecoin miners don't appreciate SegWit anymore.

This is the sort of mindless garbage I'm talking about


Huge amounts of loud-mouths (that sometimes mysteriously post for longer than 24 consecutive hours  :-\) are NOT evidence that the community is divided, Bitcoin's opponents are just stacking the deck to make it appear that way


The real evidence lies in something that's harder to fake, and guess what? Even the number of unlimited nodes is faked, a huge number of the so-called user run nodes were all run out of the same hosting service, until the idiots realised how transparently obvious that was, and changed to spreading them around different providers ::) And still Bitcoin Core nodes are over 85% of the network, that's not divided, that's pretty united

The likelihood is low. Even if BU captures all non-Segwit blocks, it will get to near 75% or less. However, many miners are not going to make a decision.

Therefore, there are three camps now: BU (32%), Segwit (27%), status quo (41%)...

Hard or soft fork ain't gonna happen for long time, everyone highly invested and don't going to risk serious bitcoin devaluation and even an entire chain being wiped out or going to zero, developers should come up with an alternative solution that benefits everyone, Segregated Witness as is it's dead.

still very far from the percentage they need, they need 95% right they have 37% or lower, it's not easy to add 60%, only one pool is going BU now and despite being the biggest pool it need support from otherwise his choice will count nothing


this assuming that an hard fork will do something bad to the value, why it should be? we can have the same value and an hard fork happening, people don't need to sell their coins if an hard fork happen

People are beginning to express this kind of point, as if this is some kind of tribal conflict where people take a side based on what patch of dirt they were born on

Newsflash, pedrog: this is a technical issue, where the objective truth should determine the outcome. If you can't contribute something meaningful, please consider giving that a try, as this sort of posturing non-argument is a waste of everyone else's oxygen

Exchanges will list BTC and BTU, both chains will worth less and one will be a lot less than the other, eventually one chain will be wiped out, I'm guessing Bitcoin Unlimited.

Devaluation is not because people will sell their coins in panic, it's because there will be double coins but not double money.

how do you know that exchange will list both and not just one? why they should list both? exchange will go with the biggest chain and therefore will not listen two coins this make more sense to me

I don't see why you say that, because pedrog's stance is exactly a form of consensus dynamics that may very well be at work: different antagonists that cannot come to a collusion over a change of rules that gives (perceived or real) advantages to some, and disadvantages to others ; in the same way that people cannot collude over changing the block reward.  The block reward is not changed, because one cannot find enough collusion over doing that: it would give advantages to some, and disadvantages to others.  This is why it cannot be changed.  In the same way, the block chain is not re-done: eliminating blocks and former transactions would bring advantages to some, but disadvantages to others.  One cannot come to a "consensus to change", so by default, one comes to a consensus not to change.

Small blocks and limited number of transactions is extremely lucrative to miners.  Releasing the pressure on the fee market is not in their interest.  

No, on the contrary.  This is big gains for an exchange.  If you list both coins, each camp gets "free money" on the other chain, which he will want to exchange for the coin he estimates.  As exchanges take fees on exchanging, the first exchange that allows you to do so, reaps in a huge amount of exchange fees.

Suppose that bitcoin's chain splits in bitcoinA and bitcoinB, in a ratio, say, 85% - 15% mining hash rate.  If an exchange only lists bitcoinA, people will take this as "their bitcoins".  However, if you list both, people have both.  If you had 5 (old) bitcoin, you now have 5 bitcoinA and 5 bitcoinB.  You think that bitcoinB is rubbish.  So you want to sell your bitcoinB (free money) to buy more bitcoinA.  However, some people will prefer bitcoinB.  They will sell their bitcoinA, and buy more bitcoinB.  The market will determine an exchange rate between bitcoinA and bitcoinB.   Say that bitcoinA is worth 5 times more than bitcoinB.  The guy with 5 bitcoinA and 5 bitcoinB, can now sell his 5 bitcoinB, and buy one extra bitcoinA which he considers "the real bitcoin".  However, another guy had also 5 bitcoin, and sells his 5 bitcoinA, to buy 25 bitcoinB.  BitcoinB is worth less, but he has more of them.  Maybe bitcoinB will rise.  Maybe it will fall.

But most people will probably change their bitcoinB in bitcoinA, or vice versa: can you see the high EXCHANGE flux that that exchange can take fees on ?

If you are the FIRST exchange to list both, you may get away with most of this flux.  $$$

BTU's block size will be bigger than BTC, it will have transactions BTC doesn't has, if an exchange goes with BTU only and it end up being wiped out when BTC gets more work done they'll go bankrupt.

I'm watching intently....I am researching ways to profit off the event should it happen.  I have no real expectation that a hard fork may result but it's a very real possibility in my mind and I am devoting a few extra brain cells to the possibility.  I am certain that the community will make the wisest choice and bitcoin will preserve its value in any event, but I do see the opportunity to maybe take advantage of the possibility and I have my attention pointed in that direction.  I'm probably not alone <---- count on that!

I guess miners who signal their support for BU do so, because larger blocks would be the better of two evils for them. SegWit would be good for Bitcoin and its users, but immediately lower the fees and thus be bad for the miners.
With bigger block size, miners will gain time, until network will be overloaded again (which is sure to happen and initially again good for the miners) and claims for a "real" solution will rise again...

The problem for them is that segwit is a soft fork.  That means that if ever it gets activated and 50% of miners applies it, it is FORCED upon all miners.   However, BU is a hard fork.  That is forced on nobody, as even a minority of miners can decide to go on the old chain.  They need to express sufficient support for BU, so that segwit doesn't happen.  And not sufficient support for BU, so that the hard fork seems without risk.  So that they can keep the small blocks of today.

In other words, support for BU from a miner is most probably just a vote against segwit, not a vote for BU.  But sufficient support for BU can make segwit impossible, which is the idea.  And nobody will DARE to make a HF with less than 90% actual support, which will not happen either --> status quo, what the miners actually want.

I don't think they are going to approve any fork(hard or soft) which will lead to Bitcoin being vulnerable to attacks so I'm not really preparing for any shit-storm, but the solution.

It depends on the real intent of SegWit mostly, imo. Seems to me there are some people involved that have their own agenda prioritized over the longevity of Bitcoin. For example saying that high tx fees (as high as $100!!!) are not an issue. Just LOL.
I really hope some kind of consensus will be found asap, but it's still probably a long way.
Personally I'd much prefere a BU "hard-fork" with 95% + adoption and Segqit can still be implemented ontop later if desired.

Btw, I feel like some people don't understand the meaning of hard-fork. It just means an UPDATE that is mendatory for anyone that wants to stay on the network. If you don't UPDATE, your chain will be sperate from the old one and cannot interact with the NEW SOFTWARE.
A BTC hardfork is NOT like the famous Ethereum DAO hardfork, where transactions were actually REVERSED.