Forking the blockchain vs. discriminating against "old" coins

[gst]

So in lots of threads there has been discussion about forking the block chain because of various reasons, such as the fact that early adopters of the system got lots of coins practically for free. In this thread I don't want to discuss if forking the chain is OK, but about ways how the chain could be forked. If you just want to argue against forking please go to another thread.

The typically mentioned way to fork is a "full fork": You just use a completely new block chain that works in parallel to the original block chain. Personally I don't think that this is a good idea or that such a fork will be successful: If there's only a slow adoption of the forked currency you just replace the original group of users that got lots of Bitcoins with cheap mining with a new group of users that will get lots of forked-Bitcoins with cheap mining. In addition, it's easy to attack a forked block chain if you can mine coins fast enough. I wouldn't be suprised if in the case of a forked chain some of the original Bitcoin miners would form a "Bitcoin cartel" that computationally attacks all forks in order to protect their own wealth (in Bitcoins).

Instead, I have another suggestion for forking the chain: Why create a new chain when you can just reuse the original chain? For example, let's just say that all coins generated before block X have zero value to you and your group of friends and that you just use "new coins" for trading. It would be possible to provide such a feature in a forked Bitcoin client by separately displaying old and new coins. If your group of friends is large enough this will mean that "new coins" are more expensive than "old coins" because there is slightly more demand for new coins.

This would give two options to existing Bitcoin users: Either they adapt to the "new coin" system and thereby increase the price difference between old coins and new coins. Or they ignore the new coins, but thereby allow others to make money using the arbitrage between the two different coin prices. Clearly, the second option is not a rational decision for each single individual: Why would you treat you new coins the same as your old coins, when you are able to charge a higher price for your new coins?

Maybe this whole approach could be somewhat more generalized by introducing a "demurrage" [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency)] for the ownership of Bitcoins. For example, by defining that each coin looses 10% of its value in each X blocks (or Y years) and by having a "new type" of Bitcoin client that transparently does this calculation for you (shouldn't be too hard to implement, as the total balance is the sum of the coins - and those coins are known to the client). The advantage of this demurrage would be that it makes speculation less attractive, and that it somewhat decreases the problem of peoplewho now hoard tons of Bitcoins that they've mined pratically for free.

Any other ideas to fork the chain? Which of those ways do you think would be most successful?

Again - my plan is not to fork the chain, neither I'd like to discuss if forking is a good or a bad think. At the current point I'm just interested in the theoretical aspects: What is the most promising method for a fork? How likely is it to succeed? etc.

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[sortedmush]

What are you going to do about the early adopters of the new fork?

All this bitterness against the early adopters cracks me up. Fucking bravo I say.

[FreeMoney]

We've actually been discussing a similar idea in our secret 'EA' forum. We don't think it's fair that all these new people are coming in after we took a risk on an essentially useless pretend currency. Newcomers have a much more stable market, more help, more services, a larger community, etc. Not to mention free open source GPU software when we had to use slow inefficient CPUs. So we're going to implement something called reverse demurrage. We signed each other's wallets with our 'EA' keys that Satoshi issued and only coins in these wallets will be free of reverse demurrage. Reverse demurrage means that your coins will be shrunk in transit. We're going to try a 5% rev-dem rate at first, but it'll probably have to be increased as we foresee more and more people coming in with ever faster hardware and ever more assurance of value. Please don't be surprised if we decide to switch to multiple reverse demurrage which will decrease your coins over and over as they pass through our nodes. But at least we're not trying to fork you.

[rezin777]

But at least we're not trying to fork you.

ROFL!

[cloud9]

Goodluck with all the: (Name goes here)Bitcoin.org

It would not be very secure in network hash; which would by the way be needed to prevent competition from rendering it obsolete.  Competition from the old larger network could just double spend on the smaller network (if it wanted to waste its precious resources on something like that).  The threat of double spending will make it not really a viable competitor for the old larger more secure Bitcoin network.

A fork's coins will have its own value though (and will always be at the mercy of any larger network) - kind of like lead and gold - but unfortunately we still can not turn lead into gold and the old network had a long head start to get to nearly 4 Thash/sec mining valuable bitcoins.  Another network will be valued by its Thash/sec or Ghash/sec or Mhash/sec or Khash/sec - because it tells you how many miners are behind the security of the network - protecting its integrity.

[Littleshop]

What are you going to do about the early adopters of the new fork?

All this bitterness against the early adopters cracks me up. Fucking bravo I say.

+1

I joined in Feb, have no 'old' coins and am happy as I could be.  I can now sell items online with almost no 'financial friction' due to bitcoin.  Try selling a $2 item via paypal once and see how much you collect.  

The early adopters put in the time, built up the community and without them we would not be here.

[gst]

What are you going to do about the early adopters of the new fork?

The early adopters of the new fork won't have any huge advantage, as there are already lots of miners which prevent you from cheaply mining coins. After all, the block chain is exactly the same - just the "starting point" changes.

Of course, there are still some small advantages for the early adopters to make the fork more attractive, such as the arbitrage-possibility due to the difference between old and new coin prices.

However, compared to the current system, where some individuals own a significant amount of the market, the advantages of early adopters in this new scheme are nearly irrelevant.

[sortedmush]

The early adopters of the new fork won't have any huge advantage, as there are already lots of miners which prevent you from cheaply mining coins. After all, the block chain is exactly the same - just the "starting point" changes.

Of course, there are still some small advantages for the early adopters to make the fork more attractive, such as the arbitrage-possibility due to the difference between old and new coin prices.

However, compared to the current system, where some individuals own a significant amount of the market, the advantages of early adopters in this new scheme are nearly irrelevant.

What amount of the market is significant?

Why should the early adopters adopters of bitcoin be punished at all?

[FreeMoney]

What are you going to do about the early adopters of the new fork?

The early adopters of the new fork won't have any huge advantage, as there are already lots of miners which prevent you from cheaply mining coins. After all, the block chain is exactly the same - just the "starting point" changes.

Of course, there are still some small advantages for the early adopters to make the fork more attractive, such as the arbitrage-possibility due to the difference between old and new coin prices.

However, compared to the current system, where some individuals own a significant amount of the market, the advantages of early adopters in this new scheme are nearly irrelevant.

You will let us know as soon as you open it right?

It's so easy to do I suspect you already have and are just loading up on diff 1 coins.

[boumalo]

I like digging those all threads so much, it put things in perspective

[tvbcof]

I like digging those all threads so much, it put things in perspective

Ya, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Actually, that's a bit untrue.  I don't see the volume of calls to screw 'early adopters' now that I did back then.

I wonder how many of the people who were crying for 'justice' back then kept buying down until the end of 2011.  Our 'second chance' so to speak.  It didn't seem to me that there were very many at all near the end.

[greenlion]

Code it, and if people want to go on your altcoin (because no matter what kind of rhetoric surrounds it, that's what this is thread is about), then you win.

[tvbcof]

Code it, and if people want to go on your altcoin (because no matter what kind of rhetoric surrounds it, that's what this is thread is about), then you win.

Huh?  Oh, that.  Good luck going on that 'altcoin'.  It doesn't exist and likely never will and I'd more or less forgotten about it.  Even if it did exist, it would not be an 'altcoin'.  More of a colored coin than anything.  Unless there was some desperate need to separate.  I envisioned it more than anything as a test-bed were ideas could be explored more efficiently since Bitcoin is to critical at this point to allow much progress.

[kolev]

What are you going to do about the early adopters of the new fork?

All this bitterness against the early adopters cracks me up. Fucking bravo I say.

+1

I joined in Feb, have no 'old' coins and am happy as I could be.  I can now sell items online with almost no 'financial friction' due to bitcoin.  Try selling a $2 item via paypal once and see how much you collect.  

The early adopters put in the time, built up the community and without them we would not be here.

Actually, you can. You just need to apply for micropayments account with PayPal, which charges $0.05 + 5%, so, out of $2, you will collect $1.85.