To get some perspective on the logic I want to promote, first read theymos's Reddit sticky post (he is the moderator or r/bitcoin and also one of the owners of Bitcointalk.org):
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/You can also read the very respected Bitcoin research Meni Rosenfeld's comment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/cu6udfeI also note this hostile new "feature" (a.k.a. trojan horse) in Bitcoin XT (a.k.a. GavinCoin):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156489.0But let me attempt to remove my subjective opinion from the objective logic I want to present.
A hard fork if it succeeds is a majority attack against the minority. Thus it is technically a 51% attack where the adversary that has greater than 50% of the hashrate can always win the longest chain of proof-of-work and thus can dictate to the minority (that is unless the minority can distinguish which blocks are being produced by the adversary and decide to never mine on them, thus maintaining their minority hashrate chain as distinct).
For example, afaics the change to Bitcoin XT to blacklist the Tor exit node IP addresses does not make the blocks produced by Bitcoin XT miners distinguishable from those blocks mined by those running Bitcoin Core full nodes.
Of course once Bitcoin XT nodes begin producing blocks greater than 1 MB in size, these blocks would be distinguished as not being produced by Bitcoin Core miners. However, note that one of the characteristics of a 51% attack is that it can indeed change the protocol. Of course the minority can refuse to mine on the new protocol, but given that network hashrate is so crucial for security in Bitcoin's design, it is doubtful that a minority block chain could survive because the network hashrate of the majority (especially a significant majority) could be diverted to execute large double-spends on the minority chain wrecking havoc. Just the threat of that possibility is probably enough to cause significant HODLers to sell their coins on the minority fork causing it's price to diverge downwards.
Thus, network hashrate political wars are attempts to make 51% attacks. They are adversarial.
All of this could be avoided with two improvements to crypto-currency technology:
- Side-chains so HODLers can move their Bitcoin value to the protocol of their choice.
- A way to filter 51% attacks, so that network hashrate is not a weapon of mass destruction, and so the principle of side-chains can work correctly.
Blockstream is implementing the first improvement.
I am implementing the second improvement.
Note there are some issues with side-chains that have to be dealt with carefully. The movement of coins between chains needs to have long lock up times to insure that reorganizations due to orphaned chains can't create a chaotic mixed up outcome (namely duplicate copies of coins) that can't be restored. Speculators can help users move their coins faster between chains for a fee which covers their opportunity cost and risks in the lock up.
It is time we put an end to this nonsense, by using technology to do so.
P.S. note I am formerly the username AnonyMint (and numerous usernames hence), which I abandoned last year to try to encourage myself to stop wasting so much time posting in forums. When I first joined this forum as AnonyMint in Spring 2013, I wrote an article "Bitcoin : The Digital Kill Switch" which Google will confirm to you was published around the web a bit. My real name is on that article.
