Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin has demonstrated over the last 10 years that it is resilient to market crashes, government bans, and even organised FUD campaigns. However, lurking behind all this is a less-publicised threat which might challenge its decentralisation in some more fundamental ways than we have yet fully anticipated: global internet fragmentation.

And we are already witnessing the precursors:

• The Great Firewall of China successfully isolating its internet against the rest of the world.
• The Russian law of “Sovereign Internet” which allows the country to operate an isolated domestic internet.
• Political crises such as the shutdowns in India, Iran and parts of Africa.
• In some jurisdictions, satellite restrictions and spectrum control.

Should these trends pick up, we may enter a world where the global internet is fragmented into regional intranets with little cross-border connectivity.

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Why This Matters for Bitcoin

The decentralisation of Bitcoin relies on the connectivity of nodes around the world. If extensive segments of the network are isolated:

• Partitions may be long enough to create consensus splits.
• Mining centralisation could gain momentum as only some regions will be able to reach out reliably to the majority chain.
• Fee markets might be divisible, where various regions have various mempools and transaction backlogs.
• Unless wallets become reliable when cross-border transactions must be broadcast or verified, user experience may suffer.

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Potential Mitigations

There are solutions already on board but are they adequate?

• Eliminate reliance on the terrestrial internet by using satellite nodes (e.g., the Blockstream Satellite).
• Mesh networks and Bitcoin relays with LoRa.
• In extreme cases, sneakernet or physical transfer of signed transactions.
• Multi-path relay protocols in order to avoid censorship.

However, these remain niche, and the uptake is low.

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Questions for the Community

• What is the realism of internet fragmentation at scale in 1020 years?
• Can the current set of consensus rules on Bitcoin survive long network partitions without significant forks?

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I want to know what node operators, miners, and devs have to say:

• Have you tested Bitcoin in low-connectivity or partitioned environments?
• How would it be most practical to maintain Bitcoin as it is worldwide when the internet ceases to be worldwide?

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And, if we are serious about Bitcoin as a money that is censorship-resistant and borderless, then this is a discussion we must have before it becomes a crisis.

1020 years, really?  ;D You should not be spending your short life discussing what will happen in a thousand years. Humans generally can't even make accurate 10 year predictions.

Yes, the mechanism for resolving the problem that you wrote about is deeply built into the protocol. The longest chain wins, even if it sometimes takes a while to resolve.

Works fine.