The fork

[Piper67]

What happens to Bitcoin if there is a hard fork and half go along while the other half refuse?

Actually, what happens to someone who holds bitcoins if there's a hard fork? Are they still valid on either one of the chains? On which one? Does the user get to decide?

[hazek]

What happens to Bitcoin if there is a hard fork and half go along while the other half refuse?

Actually, what happens to someone who holds bitcoins if there's a hard fork? Are they still valid on either one of the chains? On which one? Does the user get to decide?

All coins that ever existed prior to the fork can be spent on both forks. It's an economic disaster and would take a while before one or both forks recovered if at all.

[caveden]

Disaster or not, the more I read these discussions, the more I see an actual fork (as in different chains) as inevitable.

Some people seem determined to keep this handicapping 1Mb limit, and envision Bitcoin as nothing more than a SWIFT 2.0. Some people, me included, want Bitcoin to be much more than that eventually, what would require more than 7tps.

At a certain point, a fork will happen. Everybody who had coins before the fork, will have the same amount of coins on both chains, the old and the new one. People like me will sell part of their old coins in exchange for coins in the new chain (the one without the limit). Some other people will do the other way around. Lots of price turbulence will happen. I can't predict how major services will behave. Would MtGox support trading of both Bitcoins, old and new? Or would they pick one?

Eventually, one of the two chains may die. Or not.

I knew from the day I learned about this block size limit that it would be a problem in the future: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1865.0
(OBS: I changed my mind about the "automatic adjustment" thing, I don't think it should be done that way anymore)

[Technomage]

I'm fairly certain that Gavin and his supporters would not go ahead with the fork unless major services such as Gox, Blockchain.info, Coinbase, major pools etc were actually behind him. After that it really doesn't matter jack shit what the niche of resistance does. That other fork would be a super minority and dead fairly quickly.

I could easily see Bitcoin Foundation starting a major lobby campaign for support of the changes in the fork. They would most likely win a large majority behind them. Personally I'm in the latter camp as well, I want Bitcoin to be cheap and usable for $1 transactions. Having to pay a $20 fee to include a transaction to the blockchain is ridiculous.

[hazek]

I'm fairly certain that Gavin and his supporters would not go ahead with the fork unless major services such as Gox, Blockchain.info, Coinbase, major pools etc were actually behind him. After that it really doesn't matter jack shit what the niche of resistance does. That other fork would be a super minority and dead fairly quickly.

I could easily see Bitcoin Foundation starting a major lobby campaign for support of the changes in the fork. They would most likely win a large majority behind them. Personally I'm in the latter camp as well, I want Bitcoin to be cheap and usable for $1 transactions. Having to pay a $20 fee to include a transaction to the blockchain is ridiculous.

Yeah and while we're at it we can change the block reward to 25 forever and get rid of fees entirely, then shorten the avg blocks per hour to 60, so no more long waiting times for confirmations...   If you don't like Bitcoin, fork the source code and start your own cryptocurrency.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I don't know much about this issue, but it seems that any sort of fees to miners should be allowed to float on the free market. The proper amounts and conventions would sort themselves out. We're all natural order free marketeers here, right?

[justusranvier]

What happens to Bitcoin if there is a hard fork and half go along while the other half refuse?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144895.msg1539977#msg1539977

[Technomage]

I don't know much about this issue, but it seems that any sort of fees to miners should be allowed to float on the free market. The proper amounts and conventions would sort themselves out. We're all natural order free marketeers here, right?

This is clear, to me at least. The issue is that there is a deliberate attempt at introducing artificial scarcity where it's actually not needed. Scarcity for the monetary base is quite understandable, everyone agrees with that. However many of us want Bitcoin to be usable for a larger amount of small transactions, and affordably. That requires eventually raising the block size limit. That in turn would increase the requirements to mine or run a full node, which some people think "increase centralization", which in my opinion is complete BS.

I don't, however, think that everyone will ever agree with this. Bitcoin has to evolve though, otherwise it will have nothing to do with day to day payments in the future. I think it's more of a naming issue. There will be "Bitcoin 2.0" and the old, soon to be dead, Bitcoin.

[DannyHamilton]

- snip -
If you don't like Bitcoin, fork the source code and start your own cryptocurrency.

Although at this point it seems that the discussion is devolving into a debate on whether the definition of "Bitcoin" includes the possibility of an increased maximum blocksize in the future or not.

Is it clear somewhere in the protocol or the white paper that define "Bitcoin" what the long term plan was for maximum blocksize?  If so, then I'd think that such a statement defines "Bitcoin", and refusing to support that written long term plan would constitute "starting your own cryptocurrency".

So, does the protocol or the white paper specify that the maximum blocksize should never be increased beyond 1MB?  Do either specify that the maximum blocksize could be increased in the future?

[DannyHamilton]

I think it's more of a naming issue. There will be "Bitcoin 2.0" and the old, soon to be dead, Bitcoin.

It's a lot more than a naming issue. As has been pointed out, it would be a fiscal disaster for both to attempt to coexist since coins from before the fork would immediately be spendable on both systems.

[Technomage]

It's a lot more than a naming issue. As has been pointed out, it would be a fiscal disaster for both to attempt to coexist since coins from before the fork would immediately be spendable on both systems.

True, but as I already said, a hard fork won't be done at all if there is not sufficient agreement. At least all the major services have to back it. It's not a disaster if a small minority refuse to upgrade.

If it can't be done, then Bitcoin will simply start getting more expensive in the future, until all day to day payments are done with competitive cryptocurrencies or centralized services.

[markm]

Doing a "hard fork" is hard, but maybe better than putting in some automatic adjustment that someone could end up "gaming".

If each time the limit is to be raised another megabyte, or each time it is to be doubled, the whole "hard fork" thing has to be gone through again that might provide some security at least until the developers get the hard fork techniques down to a point where it becomes pretty much just a "rubber stamp" that goes along with whatever change they decide to make next.

Clearly blocks are plenty big enough currently, maybe even too big, since we are clearly not losing per bitcoin price/value due to high transaction fees nor are we even managing to discourage "frivolous" transactions (like "sorry, you lost, please try again" type messages which probably belong in IM or some other kind of chat system not in the world's permanent global ledger of the world's most important, most highly secured value storage system).

If the fees are not high enough to discourage every penny-ante gambler from yelling to the world about each and every few-penny bet they lose then the fees are probably too low.

-MarkM-

[caveden]

I'm fairly certain that Gavin and his supporters would not go ahead with the fork unless major services such as Gox, Blockchain.info, Coinbase, major pools etc were actually behind him.

They could eventually support both chains.
But yeah, it would likely be easier for services to simply choose one. No modification on their side other than updating their bitcoind install.

[Technomage]

I agree with markm in that this is a future problem, not something that is a problem right now. Fees are currently almost nonexistent and even free transactions get in the blockchain fairly well. The block size is still adequate, for now.

[caveden]

Seeing how Bitcoin grows, it wouldn't surprise me if we start bumping on this 1Mb limit yet this year.

[Technomage]

Seeing how Bitcoin grows, it wouldn't surprise me if we start bumping on this 1Mb limit yet this year.

Bumping on it occasionally is okay, bumping it all the time is where we enter problem territory. It can happen quickly though, Bitcoin is growing fast.

[caveden]

I'd say "bumping all the time" is what should be avoided. Ideally the change should be done before that start happening.

[tvbcof]

Doing a "hard fork" is hard, but maybe better than putting in some automatic adjustment that someone could end up "gaming".

If each time the limit is to be raised another megabyte, or each time it is to be doubled, the whole "hard fork" thing has to be gone through again that might provide some security at least until the developers get the hard fork techniques down to a point where it becomes pretty much just a "rubber stamp" that goes along with whatever change they decide to make next.

Clearly blocks are plenty big enough currently, maybe even too big, since we are clearly not losing per bitcoin price/value due to high transaction fees nor are we even managing to discourage "frivolous" transactions (like "sorry, you lost, please try again" type messages which probably belong in IM or some other kind of chat system not in the world's permanent global ledger of the world's most important, most highly secured value storage system).

If the fees are not high enough to discourage every penny-ante gambler from yelling to the world about each and every few-penny bet they lose then the fees are probably too low.

-MarkM-

+1

Facilitating a dopey penny-ante gambling platform is hardly worth the cost of chasing people who might wish to operate transfer nodes (and thus be 'peers' in the supposedly p2p solution) to my way of thinking.

If it takes higher fees to discourage pointless dust, I'm for it...with some regret.  Other more theoretical forms of addressing scaling issues do not seem forthcoming.  A second best would be to chase small fry into other crypto-currency solutions and have Bitcoin proper evolve into a backing store platform for 'the elite.'

I just fired up my client after a year of down-time (thinking about digging into some of my deep storage loot to re-coup my initial outlay) and it has been catching up on the block chain for 4 days now.  Not only that, but it's sucking the life out of my 4G i5 main workstation like no other software I've run.  To be fair, it's a pretty old build of bitcoind however.  Once I confirm that my some of my deep storage value is able to be re-couped, I'll try to build bitcoind from head again and see if the new database scheme is more efficient.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

My general impression on this issue is that it's socialists vs. libertarians, or central planners vs. people who believe in spontaneous order. Is there more to it? Because I get that familiar feeling of watching people who are generally bamboozled by the free market getting all worried about how stuff will pan out without some kind of hard control in place. This is just a cursory impression, though. Any statists or anti-statists care to comment on that angle?

This is kind of confusing, though, because I know for example hazek is probably a voluntarist, but he seems to take the opposition position from what I'd expect due to centralization concerns. Perhaps the debate is more about what really constitutes centralization, or a kind of centralization to be feared or that inhibits natural order. Generally centralization is "always bad," but we may need a clearer definition of centralization to get to the bottom of this.

[notig]

It's also important to note that there are many upgrades that can be done to Bitcoin if a hard fork is needed anyway. It's actually very beneficial. It will allow Bitcoin to stay competitive with smaller and more agile cryptocurrencies.

Can you list those upgrades out of curiosity?