what would happen if bitcoin had a software bug

[schnuber]

As far as I understood, the concept of bitcoin is, that no one has the ability to control it. There is no entity behind it whatsoever that has the ability to manipulate the bitcoin system.
But what happens if sometime in the future we discover that the bitcoin software has a bug. E.g a security bug or a technical bug or simply any sort of bug that would significantly impair the usability of bitcoin. Could the bug be fixed somehow?
Well, to my thinking the answer to this question should be NO. Because if it were YES then that would mean that the bitcoin system actually IS manipulable.

Please clarify. Thanks

Best regards
schnuber

[vm1990]

right its a bit more confusing than that but something similar happend not long ago with the mining pools

theres basicly 3 parts to bitcoing

1.the client
2.the blockchain
3.the mining pool software

if its 1 its a simple fix as all clients do is to read the block chain and add and take numbers

if its 2 very very hard to fix but if enough people on bitcoin got together it would be possible to manipulate the block chain this is whats called a 51% attack

id its 3 then a few of the pool operators could sort it out without much trouble but would require a few of them to work it out so it dosnt affect other pool or cause delays in mining

thats the simple answer anyhow XD

[Come-from-Beyond]

As far as I understood, the concept of bitcoin is, that no one has the ability to control it. There is no entity behind it whatsoever that has the ability to manipulate the bitcoin system.
But what happens if sometime in the future we discover that the bitcoin software has a bug. E.g a security bug or a technical bug or simply any sort of bug that would significantly impair the usability of bitcoin. Could the bug be fixed somehow?
Well, to my thinking the answer to this question should be NO. Because if it were YES then that would mean that the bitcoin system actually IS manipulable.

Please clarify. Thanks

Best regards
schnuber

There was a bug which led to a blockchain fork. Miners made 51% attack to fix the bug, so Bitcoin is centralized.

[vm1990]

yes but at the same time it took no less than 4 mining pools to do it

[Come-from-Beyond]

yes but at the same time it took no less than 4 mining pools to do it

They did it coz someone in Bitcoin Foundation said so. Bitcoin is centralized. ==> Any bug will be fixed, the blockchain will be reverted and so on.

[vm1990]

id argue with you but its probably not worth it the weak point of bitcoin is the mining pools and oly if you can get 3 of the 5 biggest to agree to do something (this is the first time iv ever seen them all take an action)

[schnuber]

So the bigger the newtwork gets the harder it will be for a 51% attack. On one hand, this is a good thing because it increases the safety of the bitcoin system against hackers, but on the other hand it will make it harder if not impossible to fix bugs in the block chain.
Did I understand this correctly?

[vm1990]

its sort of correct but alot of the miners seem to stick with the big mining pools such as slush's pool and BTCguild
heres the stats control 51% of that and you in theory have control of the block chain
http://blockchain.info/pools

[Gator-hex]

The 51% bug was fixed in the LiteCoin version 

[dorei]

yes but at the same time it took no less than 4 mining pools to do it

They did it coz someone in Bitcoin Foundation said so. Bitcoin is centralized. ==> Any bug will be fixed, the blockchain will be reverted and so on.

Who is this "Bitcoin Foundation"?

[Come-from-Beyond]

Who is this "Bitcoin Foundation"?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113400.0