Bitcoin Forum

What will you do if 80-90% of miners start mining > 1MB blocks ?
Will you ignore this chain and will be waiting 1-2 hours for 1 confirmation on original chain ?

If somebody makes bitcoin transaction then it apears on Segwit2x chain (bigger block, faster confirmation).
I think it takes hours(or days) to confirm on original chain.

Do I miss something ? (It will be not the same as with Bitcoin cash)

I plan not to use Bitcoin over the fork period. It costs me nothing to wait,  so I will wait and wait some more,  until the 2x attack runs out of money.
I believe the users don't want 2x, so few people will be buying 2x, the price will drop, and it won't be able to support the large amount of miners (80-90%) that ideologically want to mine it. So, to pay their electricity bills and realise the investment in hardware, a percentage will switch back to BTC.
The miners may have deep pockets, but they can't continue indefinitely. No doubt this will all drag on for a while, but like I said, I can wait, and they can't.

Yes, it is good strategy.

>so few people will be buying 2x,

Nobody will be buying 2x, they will be buying BTC and those transactions will be replaying on 2x

Theres going to be opt-in replay protection.

To split your coins
On BTC chain you have some coins in address (A), you send your coins to another address you own (B), and include a further special recipient address 3Bit1xA4apyzgmFNT2k8Pvnd6zb6TnwcTi  to whom you send a few satoshis.
Any transactions that contain this special address will be ignored by 2X miners.
Once this is successful, you will have your BTC in an address(B) you own.

Now you switch to the 2X chain, and send again from your first address (A), this time to a different addresses (C) you own this time omitting the special recipient address.

After this:
A is empty on both chains
B contains BTC coins
C contains 2X coins

(Always split to addresses you own, so if anything goes wrong, it shouldn't matter)
But I don't think I'll be bothering to split.

I'm tempted to make money on this. :-)
1. Move BTC2X to new address with 0 fee (will be never confirmed on original chain)
2. When BTC2X confirmed then move BTC to new address (include fee)
3. Sell BTC2X if somebody is willing to buy.

But your plan is safer :-) (but take more time, I think -> I assume, transaction on original chain take long time)

Edit:
> further special recipient address 3Bit1xA4apyzgmFNT2k8Pvnd6zb6TnwcTi  to whom you send a few satoshis.
This address is valid on Segwit2x too (it will be replayed on 2x)

As I wrote elsewhere (the Wall Observer thread), I read about two ways to split:

1) Mix freshly mined coined into your transaction.  Mined coins only exist on ONE chain, so you're safe your transaction ends up on that chain.

2) Timelocked black magic? I'll be looking for some more info about this. Clues anyone?

There's plenty of bravado out there, but if Corecoin really does get awarded the current signalling distribution then it's going to be borderline unusable and it'll stay that way unless they themselves hard fork into a different form. Then we have three coins as a few nutters might mine the original one.

Things are going to heat up rapidly between now and November, but I think most people are rational enough to know 2X is going to be a fuckup that's abandoned before it gets rolling.

I'll do nothing. That's the safest thing to do: refrain from making any transactions until you are confident that you can safely do so (without being replay attacked). The last thing you want to do is be one of those idiots choosing sides before listening to the market. That's just asking to lose money.

When the initial dust settles, I'll use the opt-in replay protection coded into Segwit2x to split my Segwit2x coins into a new wallet. Then I'll probably wait a few weeks/months to see how the market reacts before making any big decisions.

the only obvious answer to this question is YES. no matter what happens worst case scenario is that 2x will be like BCH. if you say no, you are saying no to a lot of free money :)

it will surely be A LOT longer than 1-2 hours for 1 confirmation if current chain works with 10-20% of hashrate and with the same number of daily transactions and even a possibility of spam attack!

there are differences between the two.
BCH didn't have any support. it only had a small hashrate a Roger Ver who is trying to take over.
2x has a huge hashrate support and some big businesses such as BitPay behind it.


no it won't be replayed on 2x, it will be invalid and ignored on 2x chain.
but there are other ways of protecting against it which are also cheaper.


faster chain will be on block 200 and slower will be on block 100 (examples).
you create a transaction on faster chain and set your locktime to 201 and also enable RBF (change the sequence to a smaller number) this tx can only be mined on block 201. the faster chain mines this. the slower chain needs to find 101 more blocks to be able to mine that transaction so you have a long time.

as soon as your tx was confirmed on faster chain you double spend it on the slower chain but this time send the coins to another address you own.

Looks good. Is there software what can create such transaction ?

bitcoin core and by extension any fork of it (including SegWit2x) will automatically add locktime based on last block height so you are goo there. but i am not sure how you mark the transactions as RBF in Core. i think you have to do it through command line!
but Electrum for example has RBF option in the preference which is as simple as checking a box. but it does not have option to change the locktime (i think they were planning on adding this in the new versions but i have not yet checked it).

It seems to me that any transactions at the time the fork will be risky. There are many ways and there is no one with a 100% guarantee. What makes you hurry? I support those who will pause until the situation is not clarified and the transaction will take place without problems. This situation will last a maximum of a few days. What's the problem to wait for this?

What you have to do is wait and see. There are miners that will drop from the agreement because they know it's dangerous for them to try to do something as stupid as being traitors to bitcoin and supporting bizcoin aka segwit2x.

Segwit2x is going to get dumped, the price will crash, and miners will be back en masse to mine the most valuable coin (legacy Bitcoin). One does not simply bribe corporations and miners with fiat and then claim that is Bitcoin, because Bitcoin would be dead at that point. Good news is, hardforkers will be humiliated once again. The smartest thing to do is to dump hardforks immediately.

I will definitely not use this chain in any way. And trust me , the majority of users won't do either!
Miners don't make the rules! They will again learn a very hard lesson. The second one after UASF showed them where the real power is!!

the best thing in times like this is to wait and see. you can not give any opinion right now.

i am not sure how this fork is going to be, but surely there will be some "signalling" period. by then everything will become crystal clear. you can see how much of the hashrate is supporting what and then you also look at how much of community is supporting what.
if a good high percentage was on one side (like SegWit vs BCH) the joke coin will be clear. if it is not a high percentage then you can't really decide, you will have to wait and see which chain survives and which chain has the higher price and utility.

but no matter what, it is best to claim the other coins to have the extra money. ;D

Don't be an idiot. This is not Corecoin vs Bizcoin, this is Bitcoin vs Bizcoin. If a conglomerate of corporations and miners bribed by US money takes over the development of bitcoin, how isn't bitcoin dead?

Don't be on the wrong side of history, this has nothing to do with Core, if you think otherwise you have some lurking to do.

It depends on the miners doesn't it? They haven't come out and said what they're going to do.

Does it mean if you buy 1 bitcoin, you will get 1 2x coin for free?

I will simply keep both of them in hand. Last time with BCH hardfork and choose to dump BCH and keep BTC. But this time is different, it's too risky to make a choice when I can not fully understand the situation.

There are miners already rejecting the agreement, the agreement has been broken a million times, the agreement is poorly written, it lacks a lot of details, it included that it would be followed in order to avoid a hardfork (and since the BCash hardfork happened, and miners in the agreement mined the fork to both, another reason why it was broken), the agreement also didn't include the replay protection measures... it is a total mess and any true bitcoiner should be doing whatever is on its hand to stop this.

If the exchanges that should be listing both coins, dont list both coins, I can't wait for the legal consequences, because some people with a lot of money is going to be extremely pissed off at some corporations playing around with their bitcoins.

I generally agree with the idea that users matter, not miners. That is, hash power tends to follow price instead of the reverse. But there are interesting game theory implications here that are going largely ignored.

Unfortunately, miners "following the money" is not a fluid, efficient process when we're talking about incompatible forks of a live network. This is a market process and markets are not efficient. Miners will need to make decisions about what they believe users want, and they will do so based on incomplete information. They may very well be wrong. We could easily see a situation where, say, 35% of users support the legacy chain, 15% of users support the Segwit2x chain, and 50% of users don't know what the hell is going on.

But a miner isn't even privy to that information. They can see node counts (are these sybils?), hashpower (should I follow the other miners?), social media (does it really matter to the network what a couple thousand people are saying on Twitter?), the forums (ditto?)..... what should they do?

It's much better to be a user in this situation. Just sit back and do nothing and let the miners duke it out. You'll have coins on both chains (or neither, if you're more interested in hedging your dollar value)...

I think this guy has a pretty good take on what will happen: https://twitter.com/bitcom21/status/915610111174836224

For a non-technical person like me, if ever there is a bitcoin fork, I will always go for the Bitcoin Network, it would be much complicated to know the difference and would be a bigger risk if I chosed the other one.  Honestly, I guess those who keep the old chain when we have already a new improved chain is in only for profit.  Because I do not see any  other reason why they have to keep them alive.

I don't think it's possible to use nLockTime in Electrum. Not in the standard user interface, anyway. I've browsed through Electrum's command line documentation and I don't see any reference to nLockTime, either, so I'm at a loss for how to make it work.

I also just came across an interesting case where even Segwit2x users are vulnerable because of the way replay protection is being implemented: https://twitter.com/hrdng/status/915967021254414336


The bottom line: be very, very careful after the fork. I would avoid doing anything until some experts release good tutorials on how to properly split coins.

No I wouldn't. I am with 2MB blocks, but they have to be implemented in the main bitcoin repository by the devteam. No other fork will be able to overcome the first bitcoin.

My understanding is this:

As there is no replay protection (only the opt-in mechanism described by fluidjax), if you don't mine, you will be using initially both chains with your Core client. That means that if you don't split, you will be using also Segwit2x because your transactions (and the transactions that go to your address and use also both chains) will be written on both chains. The only difference will be that the Segwit2x-only transactions (from Segwit2x chain to you, with coins that are NOT on the Core chain) won't appear in your wallet.

This is, however, a crucial problem for Segwit2x: An user would have to install the 2x client if she wants to receive money from the 2x chain and use (send) it. So after some time - some days, some weeks at most if she doesn't use BTC too much - she must install the 2x/Btc1/Electrum2x/whatever2x client if she wants to use that chain.

The question is now how many users will do this. Exchanges and other companies that support Segwit2x will surely try to promote a Segwit2x client, and they could have some success because from what I perceive, most non-technical users are "apolitical" in the block size debate and would use the client that gives them personally the greatest advantages.

If Segwit2x does manage to hold more than 80% of the hashrate for more than a week, I predict that then the 2x chain will win the battle because enough users would change to the new chain (because they need to sell coins, merchants using BitPay, Coinbase users ...) and the "original BTC" chain will be too slow for them.

This can only work if both BitPay and Coinbase stay with Segwit2x and don't support the original BTC chain for that whole period. If any of those begins to "tumble" and support the original BTC chain - even calling it an altcoin, e.g. "Corecoin" or so - Segwit2x will be an altcoin and can have, at most, the significance of Bitcoin Cash (probably less!).

The most likely outcome is, in my opinion, that the Core chain will "win" the battle, Segwit2x will be marginalized, and big blockers will switch to Bitcoin Cash definitively. That could have as a consequence that Bcash will be stronger than now, although I don't think it can ever be the leading coin.

i couldn't find it either. but i remember something about this!
you can always make the transaction and before signing it, manually change the last 4 bytes of the raw transaction (8 hex characters) to your locktime ;)
a little advanced but not hard.

for example the transaction ends with: "....88ac00000000" for locktime of 0. and last block height now is 488503. you set it to 488504 which is 38740700 in little-endian "....88ac38740700"

This is the age-old conundrum of hard forks and why many believe they will inevitably lead to multiple blockchains in a mature currency like Bitcoin. I wouldn't be surprised if most Bitcoin users don't even know/care about the block size debate and various forks. They've just been running Core or Electrum and will continue to do so. Bitcoin is a real, live economy. Businesses run like clockwork on it with scripts and APIs. Every user manually, simultanously installing a new client? In Bitcoin? Give me a break -- impossible. On smaller and/or more centralized networks, this isn't necessarily true, as we've seen with Ethereum and Monero. But clearly hard forks lead to chain splits once stakeholders really dig their heels in.


I think that's what Bitcoin Cash supporters are hoping for, and why they seem generally supportive of 2X. I suspect you're right. I'm not sure which altcoin chain will win out between 2X and BCH, but I think probably BCH. It's the big blocker's bloatchain of choice.


Wow, you learn something new everyday. I'll experiment with some very small transactions.

you can always decode the final transaction you made with some tool like https://blockchain.info/decode-tx or any others that you may prefer and check to see if everything is ok before broadcasting the transaction.

you can check this for reference: https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#raw-transaction-format

There is the -walletrbf command line argument (defaults to "false" as this is an "Opt-In" feature... But like all the command line options, you can simply add it to your bitcoin.conf:

Ref: https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.14.0#opt-into-rbf-when-sending

I don't consider it totally impossible, as only those who rely on automated systems would be forced to instantly "update" the client. And the others, as I already said, could be persuaded by exchanges to change to the "hard-forking" client.

But this obviously would be much easier if the hard-fork is not "contentious" (has majority approval with businesses and developers) and is planned well in advance - both things didn't happen with Segwit2x. Their only chance to "win" the battle is that really so much hashrate changes to the hard-forking chain that the original one becomes practically un-usable (I guess even 75% would not be enough for that, more 85-90%).


I think that if Segwit2x fails to become "the Bitcoin" it will have not much support from big blockers, as most of them want to scale much faster and so Bitcoin Cash is their option of choice. So Segwit2x will only have one chance.

What is the source of this information? Do you trust it?

you can see the pull request from the btc1 developer team here: https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/pull/117
more discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6virdi/jeff_garzik_adds_optin_replay_protection_to_btc1/
and well-known developer and general explainer-for-noobs, jimmy song, wrote a more in-depth tutorial and explanation here: https://bitcointechtalk.com/how-segwit2x-replay-protection-works-1a5e41767103

so yes, i think we can trust the information at this point. whether the opt-in protection is sufficient/ethical is another story. most people don't even know what replay attacks are or why they matter.


i just realized, since there is no replay protection, the thread poll doesn't make sense. no one needs to install segwit2x. it will work with wallets right out of the gate. that's why it's so dangerous.

Yes this will be quite same as it was for BCH in the last fork, they will continue to buy more and more BTC.

This could be best way to get BTC2X coins safely, doesn't matter if this method takes long time for confirmations, the thing matters is that we will get the coins safely.

I think, in the end the Segwit2x will not happen. ... we will see.

Or it will be the same as with Bitcoin CrASH. (dumped as soon as possible)

It looks like this may change. I saw someone tweet that Jeff Garzik unilaterally removed the opt-in replay protection from the BTC1 repository (can't confirm at the moment). Apparently, he reopened the discussion regarding strong replay protection utilizing the OP_RETURN function. If true, that means they are preparing for there to be two viable blockchains.


I think there's a chance it won't happen, but it looks like miners and businesses are mostly doubling down. While I think that the legacy chain will prevail in the end, I think that if the legacy chain has minority hash rate, that this will affect the market more than people are currently pricing in.

Those big blockers are nutjobs, irrational and gamblers - accordingly, it seems that they are likely to employ such destructive hard forkening tactics for their own pleasures, asocial and likely destructive goals.

They are not tech savvy. They do not understand. They are trying their best.

i think some of the big blockers are actually quite tech savvy. there is a lot of overlap with ethereum/dapp developers, too. but there is a huge difference between those who have a technical grasp of blockchain consensus and those who are merely tech savvy.

there are very few developers in the world who are capable of producing consensus-critical software as reliable as what bitcoin core produces, and this group is only shrinking. one can be tech savvy and still have a "move fast and break things" mentality. it's just not appropriate for bitcoin development.

Poll changed.

>No, 1 MB(ignore Segwit2x)

Isn't Segwit blocks already 2mb, with a possibility of going 'til 4mb, and S2X 8mb?

I'm hoping for this fork to be short-lived, TBH.

The way I see it, either Segwit2x doesn't attract the hashpower we think, lands with a whimper, and becomes another BitcoinCash... or the 1MB(+witness) chain gets abandoned by miners, services follow, and eventually the bitcoin.org client adopts the size bump out of practical necessity.

So I'll wait to see which it is. No rush. If I'm wrong, then both sides of the fork will have value, which means I can reassess at that point.

You are correct.  Nearly the whole big blocker framework is nonsensical and misleading, and many folks who have been following these various big blocker arguments and iterations have come to realize that they are largely framing their ultimate take over and/or bitcoin sabotage desires as if they were technical problems (technical problems that don't really exist, except through largely exaggerated claims of their supposed existence)

bitcoin cash lacked the backing of the ecosystem. no major companies backed it, no existing bitcoin wallets were compatible with it, and even with majority hash rate, SPV wallets would have ignored its chain because of changes to the sighashing algorithm.

this is not the case with segwit2x, so it's a bit more tricky to predict. this time, major services/wallets are lined up to support the fork -- and where bitmain decides to point its hashing power could make a difference. people keep talking about miners like they are such a diverse group. they're not.

By supporting segwit2x, you will not only lose money and look like an idiot afterwards, but you will be on the wrong side story, again. As we have seen with bitcoin xt, Cash, unlimited, and whatever else, hardforks never win, and the more hardfork attempts, the weaker they become and the stronger that the real bitcoin becomes, it's like a negative asymptotic curve, it will tend to 0, so you always win by holding real BTC and dumping forks (unless a fork has somehow 100% consensus)

I get you. To a large extent I agree, which is why I think "Segwit2x becomes another BCH" - i.e., a semi-irrelevant satellite - is one of the two likely outcomes. But let me put forward a counterpoint.

What makes Bitcoin valuable in the first place? I'd argue that the most base, most meaningful factor is that transactions are atomic and irreversible.

Okay, what makes them atomic and irreversible? It's that, in order to reverse a transaction, someone would have to have more computing power than the rest of the network put together.

Now, I don't like that miners have taken the law into their own hands on this topic. Miner incentives are not really aligned properly vis block size questions. That's part of why, when the Hong Kong Consensus called for 2MB blocks (called for them! planned to implement them!) it gated their rollout behind "broad acceptance" by the ecosystem.

But the problem is, if 90% of the hashpower really does move to Segwit2x, staying on the 1MB+ blockchain now puts my atomicity and irreversibility at risk, because there now exist many, many pools with the hashpower to unilaterally 51% attack my preferred ledger. I'm not talking about Jihan Wu here; an operation the size of Slush or BTCC, with sufficient ideological motivation, would have enough power on their own to render the 1MB+ blockchain literally unusable.

Now, if that happens, would some of the other NYA signatories switch back to mining 1MB+ to outvote that asshole? Hopefully! That's what's happened when ideological splits have happened on other coins. But now we have to worry about it, when we didn't before. Isn't that a reason for businesses to switch to Segwit2x regardless of their ideological take on how it was rolled out?

That's what makes this fork different from the others, and why I feel like there's risk here where there wasn't in past splits.

Something seems wrong with your math.  Let's just assume that 90% of the mining power does switch to mining segwit2x coin, then the next question becomes what will be the extent to which other economic nodes will follow them, and maybe it is an empirical problem that has to be witnessed (and experienced in order to be believed).  

Let's say bitcoin has 10% of the mining and segwit2x has 90% of the mining, then bitocin will operate with 10% of it's former mining power, but that does not mean that the 90% are controlling what bitcoin does (as in a 51% attack), then 10% of miners would then mine bitcoin and get whatever rewards and fees - and if segwit2x is able to sustain 90% (which I really doubt that they are going to get), then there becomes two coins, and segwit2x would have more hashing power under such a scenario, if it were to play out in such a hypothetical manner that you are describing.  

I personally believe that bitcoin could survive with 10% of its current mining power, anyhow, and surely if it is continuing to get spamming attacks and all of that, then safegaurds will need to be taken regarding that, but it would not necessarily be the death of bitcoin to have a competitor with more mining power (which again really seems doubtful to play out and sustain 90% or more because it is likely that a considerable amount of economic (and networking) value is going to remain with the original bitcoin rather than the new bitcoin in which they miners supposedly are going to migrate over to... Profitable for miners?  Perhaps, but still seemingly doubtful in such a hypothetical conjecture.

That depends on the transaction types. 4MB will be almost impossible to reach - that would mean that nobody would use "normal" transactions (1 address to 1 or 2 other addresses) but everyone using P2SH-type transactions like multisig.

The best guess I read was 2,2 MB, based on the kinds of transactions that are currently used (a mix of "normal" P2PKH, P2SH and some other more marginal types). This is, however, only reachable if everyone uses Segwit-style addresses.

@JayJuanGee: I think that Qoheleth is right here. A double spend/51% attack from a malicious SHA256-miner/pool to a Bitcoin (Core) network with less than 10% of its current power will definitively be possible. They would simply switch back to the Core chain until they have 51% and attack it, and non-mining nodes won't be able to stop them. But I consider it unlikely that this will happen, because it would be extremely risky (risk of spectacular crash/loss of value of the rewards AND the double-spent coins), only if the attacker really has deep pockets and his goals are only destructive (to kill Core) I consider it realistic.

The attack of a 51% attack is clear, but I don't think they will have enough hashrate. f2pool has already said that they will not be signaling for segwit2x. And then you have the ones saying that will mine both, even ViaBTC recently said that they will mine both if it's profitable.

Im not worried, the "intention" doesn't matter. And there's still time for more and more services to keep dropping from the agreement.

Remember that Unlimited had 70% hashrate at some point. We'll see what happens this time. But if BTC can be taken over by fiat bribed actors then it's over, so we need to get over this and win. If we win this time, the hardforkers will give up for a long time until their next attempt (because they will never stop trying)

I will concede that I may not know enough about the actual technicals or even the hypothetical incentives; however, hashing power in bitcoin has also gone up 10x in the past year or so, so 1/10th of that is where bitcoin was at a bit over a year ago.

Regarding directing mining towards malicious intentions or profitable intentions, I just cannot see a large portion directly focusing their mining on malicious intentions - sure there are some that will, but those kinds of attacks, even 51% attacks will not be profitable because the recognition of the network and the value is more than just the mining power.. like I already suggested.... segwit2x itself by definition is already a 51% attack - and if it achieves 90% or so following from the miners, then it is a 90% attack, and bye go your merry way with your hashing power, but I doubt that such divergence is going to be long lived because even if migration of 90% of bitcoin's hashing goes to another coin, there is likely going to remain a whole hell of a lot more incentive to stay on the main chain, because I doubt that many economic players are easily going to play around with such renegade divergences... even if some of them have said that they would.... the segwit2x plan still seems to not have the necessary technical competence to inspire confidence.. at least at this point.....

It seems to me that increasing the size of the block will not positively affect the coin. To store such a coin, you need a lot of resources. It seems to me that now it is unnecessary. The shortest block size is less than 1 megabyte

this is precisely correct. the initial problem for users is that difficulty will take considerable time to adjust on the legacy chain. based on the difficulty at the fork block, it would take 10x the hashpower to achieve normal 10-minute block time, so confirmations will take at least 10x as long (likely much longer due to bad fee estimation --> network congestion).

what this also means is that honest miners on the legacy chain are much less equipped to fend off a 51% attack (or rather a 33% selfish mining attack). jihan wu has apparently claimed that bitmain controls a majority of the hash rate. that means that bitmain alone could kill the legacy chain without even drawing all its hash power away from the segwit2x chain or BCH. all they need to do is carry out a selfish mining attack for long enough for legacy chain miners to shut down due to attrition. (the entire time, legacy chain miners will attain zero block rewards)

now, i'm not sure whether bitmain would actually engage in this. but people shouldn't act like everyone involved is a benevolent, honest actor. bitmain is incentivized to kill the legacy chain -- they've been making it clear for years now. and so are all the companies signed onto the NYA. two chains is not the ideal outcome for anyone.

You are only considering short-term profitability. This may be a much longer term game for entities like Bitmain. Splitting Core from B2X only strengthens Bitcoin Cash and their ability to exploit AsicBoost, for example.

Same logic goes for NYA companies. Their business models might sustainable and long term profitable if precedent is set that miners can increase the block size limit (and thus lower on-chain fees).


Technically, no. A 51% attack can only occur within the protocol. Technically, Segwit2x is irrelevant to the legacy chain and is simply ignored by legacy chain nodes. What is happening is not a 51% attack, but rather an "attack-through-starvation" so to speak, where the forking miners make attaining transaction confirmations untimely and fees uncomfortably high. Academics would refer to this, I believe, as "economic coercion." Surely, it's an attack, but it should be distinguished from an actual 51% attack.

Would you stick around after your preferred chain was murdered by a few pricks and you were then forced on to a chain you want nothing to do with?

I do not. Neither do millions of other Bitcoin users.

And it's not just ideology, if they can do that then they can also award themselves Satoshi's coins, your coins, triple the 21 million limit, blacklist you and on and on.

They can wiggle their willies around all they like. They would quickly learn they won't have shit to lord over if they rock the boat to that extent.

Once that precedent has been set it cannot be unset. Bitcoin will have crossed from 'trustless' which is precarious anyway, to definitively untrustworthy. An untrustworthy BTC has no value.

would i? no, but it's not that simple. for one thing, bitmain (or whatever attacker) isn't going to announce to the world that they are 51%-attacking the legacy chain. they will act aloof and carefully hide where the attack is originating from.

for another, the narrative many people hear won't be, "bitmain is 51%-attacking the network." they could even selectively, or on a limited basis, accept some transactions into blocks, to prevent anyone from successfully charging that a 51% attack is occurring. they could even by-and-large accept only their own spam transactions into blocks, creating a narrative that it is the lack of hashpower -- not an attack -- that is causing this situation.

by the time it could be definitively proven that a malicious entity is orphaning honestly mined blocks, the legacy chain will have been virtually/completely unusable for days or even weeks. by this point, many legacy chain users and activists like luke dash jr would undoubtedly be moving forward with implementing a POW-changing hard fork.

now, surely among those users -- the activist small blocker/UASF/anti-miner community -- the narrative will be that the legacy chain was attacked. is that going to be the consensus, though? or will people believe that the legacy chain will have died by attrition, as jeff garzik keeps repeating it will? they will surely attempt to illustrate a situation where the community -- users, miners -- are collectively leaving the legacy chain, creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop ("hashpower follows users/price") where it eventually dies.


i don't think that a lot of users understand the gravity of consensus rules. there seems to be a distinction being drawn between technical parameters like block size limit and monetary policy parameters like the 21 million coin supply.


all of this is unprecedented. it's possible that -- as the NYA signatories seem to believe -- that hash power and economic nodes are far more influential by sheer numbers than full node operators. and by that i mean this: full node operators opposed to the fork will ignore the segwit2x chain, but how much of the network do they represent? we can't ignore the economic activity that major services/exchanges/payment processors represent. the question then becomes, how much of those companies' userbases are going to boycott those services? how much of those companies' userbases even knows that this debate is even going on, or cares?

That would be way harder for them.
The 21 million limit is de facto set in stone. If there was a mining client that "overruled" that limit, no user would accept his/her blocks (you would have to actively install the "higher limit client"!). Exchanges and payment processors - the most important "economic" nodes - would never sign an agreement (like the NYA) that would destroy their business model from one day to another.
The same is valid for "awarding themselves Satoshi's coins".
Let's say now there is a ultra-malicious miner cartel of 90% (e.g. paid by the PBOC) that did such a "destructive" move and sets the coin limit to 42 million via a hard fork, then attacking the 21 million chain. The users actually do have a chance to escape: an own hard fork with a changed algorithm. The "nuclear option". So they aren't forced to accept the 42 million chain.

The 42 million chain would be doomed to fail.

Clearly, i will be going with the dump. Although most of the time, i do not make choices if i can do both, I’m gonna make this one as an exception. Because anyone with common sense would really see that this coin would be nothing but a shitcoin before it even starts getting on its feet. It really Just something that is not worth my time and effort. Have more better things to do than go along with this shtty parade.

In the long term, hash power follows the price. But what many people are not accounting for is this: Miners may be willing to mine at a loss in the short term as a long term investment. If post-fork prices reflect the futures market, this might be the case. The consensus is that miners will, more or less immediately switch back to the more profitable chain.

What happens if they don't do that? Do you think users have zero incentive to use the stronger chain, especially those who don't know what the debate is all about? I imagine that describes most users.