Bitcoin Forum

Can anybody explain to me how close we are to "inevitable" hard fork? I see core nodes still dominate at over 82% with BU below 12% after all this contention and arguing. Are we exaggerating the problem or am I missing something?

https://i.imgur.com/N5zaeUc.png

It's the mining aspect that's concerning, unlimited reached >40% of blocks mined yesterday if I'm not wrong. Also anyone can be a node, these numbers are hardly reliable

Ahh, I see now... So this is really about nodes miners are running. Ok, thank you for the explanation.

No actually nodes are ran by many other normal users and bitcoin service providers along with the miners but miners play important role in hard forks. After hard fork the network which will have majority of mining power will survive while the one which doesn't have much support from miners will ultimately die.

Thanks for that... Could we see repeat of Ethereum? Both ETH and ETC are still alive 10 month after the fork with sufficient hash power to support each branch. Ethereum brand has survived so far... I guess ... Nah, we should be fine. 

Yes, we could. Bitcoin Unlimited might get the miners, but they'll never get node consensus.
This will ultimately divide the Bitcoin community, the network that has the majority of mining power will prevail, but it will be ugly just like with Ethereum.

https://i.imgur.com/ShLSIFR.png

A hard fork is expected should either of the two reach ~80% miner consensus, but it's impossible at this point so it could be lower.

It's sad how only miners decide the future of Bitcoin.

"Node consensus" numbers are easily manipulated.

For example, right now you have several hundred, possibly more, BU nodes identifying as Core. The reason they do this is to avoid the ongoing DDoS attacks which are attacking BU nodes across the board.

A good question to ask - Who is paying the Several Hundreds of Thousands $$$ bill that it costs to hire the DDoS botnets to attack BU nodes?

I'm guessing you'd find the answer at Blockstream.

More shady, desperate tactics from the Core supporters. DDoS'ing BU nodes off the network won't work and won't stop the BU movement, let them waste their money in my opinion.

Wouldn't it be even more amazing if a few thousand BU nodes were masquerading as core nodes, and then suddenly switch when time was right? Holy s...t - that's called strategy  8)

Yea, a lot of strange things happened with XT too... people ran "fake" nodes to try and trick the consensus process, but that failed and people

quickly picked up what happened. You will get a lot of confusing tactics until the signalled what route they are going. It is a pity that either of

the sides needs to resort to these kinds of "dirty" tactics.  >:(

What you're missing is that nodes only indicate the amount of support from people running the nodes and the amount that find Core nodes preferable.  BU's percentage of nodes doesn't matter because what actually causes activation is the hashrate.

The graph might show that BU has less support among the actual public though, which would mean in the case of a HF the BU price would end up failing to BTC, but we'll see if that actually happens.

The cases are different the Ethereum fork happened very early in the life of the coin a fork now for bitcoin could spell disaster, because even if at the end it works out many investors will leave and never come back .

This is certainly worrying me now. I can barely grasp the technical details. I'm one of those users who got into bitcoin just using local exchanges and use that to send money or buy bitcoins and hold them. I don't know now if this would cause my coins to lose value. I'm not surprised that some people have been selling off their coins. True some of those might be "whales" or whatever but there are also probably those who just find this all complicated and want out before they lose money.

That's only the number of nodes.

What really matters is how much hashpower does bitcoin unlimited have and bitcoin core have, and right now that number is extremely close to each other. I believe it is already something like 40% of the network hashpower is directed to bitcoin untlimited.

Anyways, Bitfinex already is listing BTC and BTU as two different coins, and currently BTU is trading at around $400 whilst BTC is at around $700.

It's definitely a great time for the speculators and the traders, they'll enjoy this event.

Indeed, it is exactly to counter that easily manipulable "node number" that Satoshi introduced Proof of Work.  Otherwise, we would make the block chain amongst nodes without mining.  But just anybody can start up 100 000 nodes on Amazon, for a tiny fraction of the cost of the mining.

If number of nodes could vote, then firing up a number of nodes for a few weeks would be a thing to do.

well not really without exchange miners can't do much, they won't be able to sell their coins, there is always chinese exchange one could say, but i doubt they are in agreement with BU and will list it as a an altcoin anyway like other major exchange

the situation doesn't look that back 36% is not even half of what they need, and they still have only antpool supporting, i fairly certain this fork will not happen

After the fix on the fix solution with BU yesterday, I think we might see a little more people moving away to Bitcoin Core or people thinking about this move. How could you trust a bunch of developers that wants to gamble with a $20 Billion industry, by submitting code that are that buggy?

FFS, open your eyes before we have to go through a HF for this. ^hmmmmmmm^

Bitcoin unlimited has made exaggeration about it as well the recent day got increased discussion. Those were a part of speculation to implement it but in reality it's losing power. Consensus won't be reached by bitcoin unlimited as things are getting progressive for bitcoin.

Yea, I hear you... Same here. Still, looking at the markets I can't believe how well BTC is holding up considering amount of negative pressure and contention out there. A few years ago BTC markets would have 20-30% daily swings, and now we are lucky to see 2-3%. I might be imagining things, but to me it feels Bitcoin is maturing and stabilizing with each passing year, and getting more immune to mood swings and publicity out there.

Trying to be hopeful as well. I thought it was going to start rising again but now it dropped to $999. Oh well, I guess I'll just wait and see. It's not like I can do anything. If I try to sell now then I'd be losing more money.

The chances for a hard fork are low at the moment it does not seem like either side wants to get out but if at some point BU earned enough support then there is the chance they may try it anyway since they will feel they have a chance in that scenario of becoming bitcoin and not an alt.

I don't think this is a correct explanation

After the fork, the fork hashing power becomes inconsequential to the remaining miners. It is the same as if some miners left and then a new altcoin sprang up which started using all this power. I'm heavily inclined to think that people are overexaggerating the power of miners. In other words, there is no such power at all, it is an illusion mostly. If most users stay with the old version and shy away from the fork (and that's what full nodes supporting SegWit explicitly tell us), all this hashing power will be utterly useless and eventually just wasted away

I understand that for beginners, these nuances can not be known so immediately. How can you be aware of this and not worry about your coins. Probably it is better to have patience, and wait until the end, keeping your bitcoin in your wallet.