Malleability - Hard fork impossible?

[Neuerung]

Hello,

i have read a while here in this forum, but this is my first post:

Lets assume that the malleability issue is only really solvable with a hard fork (for example timestamps now can´t be used either, because they are malleable too).

Some time ago these hard forks would "only" result in update of the clients and the mining-software, so this could be done (not without pain, but nevertheless).

But nowadays with ASICs, the key component for a transaction, the hashing, is done in hardware, hardwired in silicone.

Therefore should a hard fork be proposed, the majority of the whole mining capacity (now probably 99% ASICs) would decline this proposal. They would loose their whole investment in silicon, because their ASICS can´t be changed.

So a hard fork can never happen, and bitcoin can never evolve, or am i wrong?









 

[Denton]

You are wrong, the only change that you can safely say the miners won't accept is changing the proof of work from SHA to something else.

[Neuerung]

You are wrong, the only change that you can safely say the miners won't accept is changing the proof of work from SHA to something else.

Thanks Denton for this answer.

But what´s happening if additional Information has to be put into the input of the SHA hashing (like timestamps, Transaction ID´s etc.) so that they are not malleable any more.

Can this be done in software or is the ASIC hardware wired in a way lets say:
Input 2000 Bytes -->Output SHA(2000Bytes), but if you need 500 bytes more for the additional information, the current ASIC hardware is not capable of doing this?

   

[Denton]

You are wrong, the only change that you can safely say the miners won't accept is changing the proof of work from SHA to something else.

Can this be done in software or is the ASIC hardware wired in a way lets say:
Input 2000 Bytes -->Output SHA(2000Bytes), but if you need 500 bytes more for the additional information, the current ASIC hardware is not capable of doing this?

My knowledge of ASIC hardware is limited but i would say yes, it is.

[Rannasha]

ASICs (and other miners) hash the block header, which doesn't contain the actual transactions or tx-ids. Changing the way the tx-id is computed shouldn't affect mining at all.