Do wallets detect fork and warn for it?

[justforbtc]

Yestoday, we experienced a fork. For average people, they even don't know what is fork. They just care whether their transactions are safe.

I want wallets and online blockchain information site(like blockchain.info) can detect ongoing fork and issue warning immediately.

[Amph]

isn't this the whole point of the alert key? last version of core was unaffected, this is why that version didn't tell you about the fork, but 0.10.1 rc1 version did that, there were some users said so in the thread about the spv incident

[ajareselde]

The blocks were invalid, and has no transactions. afaik the only thing that was a problem would happen if the block reward was spent to
a user that didnt wait for ~30 confirmations like stated in the warning. But as far as i know, that didn't happen.
Always use the latest update of wallet, and you should be safe, atleast that's what i experienced with bitcoin core.

cheers

[lockshop11]

there were some users said so in the thread about the spv incident

Many ppl already lost their money after noticing this incident.

Yestoday, we experienced a fork. For average people, they even don't know what is fork. They just care whether their transactions are safe.

I want wallets and online blockchain information site(like blockchain.info) can detect ongoing fork and issue warning immediately.

Yes, good suggestion. It will help us get alert when fork is happening. Then we know what we should do to avoid losing money!

[Foxpup]

Bitcoin Core will automatically go into safe mode (which issues a warning and prevents new transactions being sent unless overridden) if it detects it is on the wrong side of a fork. This didn't happen in this case because Bitcoin Core (the later versions at least) wasn't on the wrong side hence there was no risk to users.

[jonald_fyookball]

Bitcoin Core will automatically go into safe mode (which issues a warning and prevents new transactions being sent unless overridden) if it detects it is on the wrong side of a fork. This didn't happen in this case because Bitcoin Core (the later versions at least) wasn't on the wrong side hence there was no risk to users.

Can you explain how this works?  How does it know there is a fork at all and which side it is on?

[valkir]

Yestoday, we experienced a fork. For average people, they even don't know what is fork. They just care whether their transactions are safe.

I want wallets and online blockchain information site(like blockchain.info) can detect ongoing fork and issue warning immediately.

Are you really asking thing? I mean, Im sure the dev know what they do. You could maybe suggest but look like what you ask already exist. 

[Foxpup]

Can you explain how this works?  How does it know there is a fork at all and which side it is on?

It knows there is a fork because it stores all orphaned or invalid blocks it receives. It specifically checks for either a major chain reorg (more than 6 blocks deep), or an invalid blockchain (one containing invalid blocks) with more proof-of-work than the best valid chain. Either of these conditions indicate that something has gone horribly wrong.

[scarsbergholden]

for the average folk that dont want to deal with the complete blockchain i would recommend using electrum, then if your mining your not an average bitcoin users most up to date on news and block statistics.

[2double0]

I am using the latest version of Bitcoin Core and did exactly before whatever it is shown in the warning, but never got warned about the fork by the wallet itself.

[justforbtc]

Bitcoin Core will automatically go into safe mode (which issues a warning and prevents new transactions being sent unless overridden) if it detects it is on the wrong side of a fork. This didn't happen in this case because Bitcoin Core (the later versions at least) wasn't on the wrong side hence there was no risk to users.

Thanks for your answer!

[coinsect]

for the average folk that dont want to deal with the complete blockchain i would recommend using electrum, then if your mining your not an average bitcoin users most up to date on news and block statistics.

Even using electrum has some extent of risks. Because you don't know which server you are connecting, and what version of bitcoin qt they are using. The best practice is to run your own bitcoin qt wallet locally with the newest version software.

[BTCjust]

Bitcoin client updated yesterday.

[pooya87]

for the average folk that dont want to deal with the complete blockchain i would recommend using electrum, then if your mining your not an average bitcoin users most up to date on news and block statistics.

Even using electrum has some extent of risks. Because you don't know which server you are connecting, and what version of bitcoin qt they are using. The best practice is to run your own bitcoin qt wallet locally with the newest version software.

unfortunately this is true to some extent.

but you can choose which server you are joining.
click on the green circle on the lower right corner, un-check the auto-connect, select which server you prefer.
after connecting to a server, in the console tab there is the information about the server you have connected to.

but the problem is that only some of them inform what version of bitcoin they are using.

[BillyBobZorton]

for the average folk that dont want to deal with the complete blockchain i would recommend using electrum, then if your mining your not an average bitcoin users most up to date on news and block statistics.

Even using electrum has some extent of risks. Because you don't know which server you are connecting, and what version of bitcoin qt they are using. The best practice is to run your own bitcoin qt wallet locally with the newest version software.

Yeah but Bitcoin will never be a mainstream success if you have to depend on the slow, heavy full client. We need functional and fully trustable non-full clients or else we die. If its now annoying running a full client for the average user, imagine in the future when the blockchain is way heavier.

[jonald_fyookball]

  We need functional and fully trustable non-full clients or else we die. 

We do.  its called Electrum.

[BillyBobZorton]

  We need functional and fully trustable non-full clients or else we die. 

We do.  its called Electrum.

Huh, did you were here a couple days ago? All SPV wallets suffered from a high risk of non valid transactions due the blockchain split, and guess what, Electrum is a SPV wallet. Basically any wallet that wasn't an updated core wallet was under risk.

[jonald_fyookball]

  We need functional and fully trustable non-full clients or else we die. 

We do.  its called Electrum.

Huh, did you were here a couple days ago? All SPV wallets suffered from a high risk of non valid transactions due the blockchain split, and guess what, Electrum is a SPV wallet. Basically any wallet that wasn't an updated core wallet was under risk.

You:  We need non-full clients.
Me:  There are some.
You:  But they aren't full clients.

[pereira4]

 We need functional and fully trustable non-full clients or else we die.  

We do.  its called Electrum.

Huh, did you were here a couple days ago? All SPV wallets suffered from a high risk of non valid transactions due the blockchain split, and guess what, Electrum is a SPV wallet. Basically any wallet that wasn't an updated core wallet was under risk.

You:  We need non-full clients.
Me:  There are some.
You:  But they aren't full clients.

SPV wallets can't be fully trusted as seen 2 days ago.

[jonald_fyookball]

 We need functional and fully trustable non-full clients or else we die.  

We do.  its called Electrum.

Huh, did you were here a couple days ago? All SPV wallets suffered from a high risk of non valid transactions due the blockchain split, and guess what, Electrum is a SPV wallet. Basically any wallet that wasn't an updated core wallet was under risk.

You:  We need non-full clients.
Me:  There are some.
You:  But they aren't full clients.

SPV wallets can't be fully trusted as seen 2 days ago.

Nothing can ever be "fully trusted" except your own node if you want to take that thinking to its logical conclusion.
However, for most of the time and especially smaller payments, SPV works great.

[Amph]

 We need functional and fully trustable non-full clients or else we die.  

We do.  its called Electrum.

Huh, did you were here a couple days ago? All SPV wallets suffered from a high risk of non valid transactions due the blockchain split, and guess what, Electrum is a SPV wallet. Basically any wallet that wasn't an updated core wallet was under risk.

You:  We need non-full clients.
Me:  There are some.
You:  But they aren't full clients.

SPV wallets can't be fully trusted as seen 2 days ago.

never bothered with those lighwallet, i know they can be good for newcomers who do not want to dl 40 giga or something, but even with a 8mega connection, it isn't a pain in the ass to download the whole chain...

everything is 40 giga nowadays, game movie, we are not in 2005 anymore....

Nothing can ever be "fully trusted" except your own node if you want to take that thinking to its logical conclusion.
However, for most of the time and especially smaller payments, SPV works great.

i still think that miners should only use core for their mining activity

[Hazir]

never bothered with those lighwallet, i know they can be good for newcomers who do not want to dl 40 giga or something, but even with a 8mega connection, it isn't a pain in the ass to download the whole chain...

everything is 40 giga nowadays, game movie, we are not in 2005 anymore....

Nothing can ever be "fully trusted" except your own node if you want to take that thinking to its logical conclusion.
However, for most of the time and especially smaller payments, SPV works great.

i still think that miners should only use core for their mining activity

I was of the same opinion but then I discovered that there are some places where internet connection is still a luxury.
People don't have limitless bandwidth and fast connection and downloading plus 40GB of Blockchain is a killer for them.
As for the miners, if they are professionals - and they should be if they mine, (because 'normal' bitcoin users don't mine anymore) of course they want to have full note wallet.

[pereira4]

 We need functional and fully trustable non-full clients or else we die.  

We do.  its called Electrum.

Huh, did you were here a couple days ago? All SPV wallets suffered from a high risk of non valid transactions due the blockchain split, and guess what, Electrum is a SPV wallet. Basically any wallet that wasn't an updated core wallet was under risk.

You:  We need non-full clients.
Me:  There are some.
You:  But they aren't full clients.

SPV wallets can't be fully trusted as seen 2 days ago.

never bothered with those lighwallet, i know they can be good for newcomers who do not want to dl 40 giga or something, but even with a 8mega connection, it isn't a pain in the ass to download the whole chain...

everything is 40 giga nowadays, game movie, we are not in 2005 anymore....

Nothing can ever be "fully trusted" except your own node if you want to take that thinking to its logical conclusion.
However, for most of the time and especially smaller payments, SPV works great.

i still think that miners should only use core for their mining activity

It's not only the download time (which is slow af even if you have a good connection, because sometimes the client is just slow at getting peers) it's also slow at processing the blockchain if you don't have a legit good computer. It takes way too much memory.
BTC without lightweight clients taht you can trust = will never be a success. BTW, it seems it still happening:

https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2015-07-04-spv-mining

We need all of this solved before mainstream takes over