For sidechain fans:
Because a block can only reference one previous block, it is impossible for two forked chains to merge.
It's possible to use the block chain algorithm for non-financial purposes: see Alternative chain.
From (the Italian ccTLD or Internet TLD bitcoin "wiki"):
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_chainAs for the
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_chain using the same algos as Bitcoin ended up adopting after its release (remember no cryptography at first):
An alternative chain is a system using the block chain algorithm to achieve distributed consensus on a particular topic. Alternative chains may share miners with a parent network such as Bitcoin's; this is called merged mining. Alternative chains have been suggested as ways to implement DNS, P2P currency exchanges, SSL certificate authorities, timestamping, file storage and voting systems.
In fact one of the first places I say anything related to SHA 256 was in Jeff Garzik's 2010 released CPU Miner (or SHA-256, or sha256 whatever you prefer I'm no formatting expert but I know capitals matter on some older computers, OS's, and interpretation so yeah - like when I see code in all caps I think hey maybe that was written on an
Apple ][ or Apple II+ (or Plus) and heck that's the computer that inspired the later founder of E*Trade to create its parent in 1982,
TradePlus. But that's besides the point.
I know BitcoinMiner was extant before that in public releases, but you never know what it planned behind closed doors. Sometimes a purposeful staged hack or malfunction/error of the Bitcoin protocol and its software or network is a clever way to abstract and secure what the core idea or master plan was all along. Timechain became block chain to Satoshi, but I don't recall him ever using
blockchain. And that matters when you're using things that are text based in their source code and operation, like wxWidgets, the first UI for Bitcoin's first (Windows and publicly distributed) 'wallet'.
Even lazslo's client speeding up hashrate in some unknown mod of 0.2 or possibly a 0.3 or 0.3.0 RC1 or RC 2 and builds for mac osx changed the game. There's many bitcoin txns on blocks out there and there's plenty of temporary databases (such as BDB database/log.* files) that have been moved or even deleted admittedly by satoshi from this forum as well as instructed to others as a way for people to get back into their wallets after running laszlo's mystery client in early to mid 2010.
You all know this. You were there.
So yes maybe the non-financial purposes of our merge mined alt chains and their common algorithm to Bitcoin protocol and source code are because our chains do things that are definitely financially valuable without directly admitting it yet. But merge mining provides security right? Well if a fork cannot "merge" according to one wiki perhaps that wiki can be proven wrong or maybe that wiki's right and our alternative merge mined coins are in fact still tied to the main Bitcoin protocol and chain and the proof is in whatever temporary Berkeley DB log.* files from the database whenever "Satoshi Nakamoto" or just bitcointalk "satoshi" privately stored info when protocol was changed in his SVN albeit then being public as "RC" leading up to his official releases after 0.1. Say Finney was the first to help with 0.1 over email. sirius helped with 0.2 before its release per credits. And a lot of people tinkered and even added makefiles for fbsd (Free BSD) and Mac OSX running on wxWidgets which is cross platform anyhow as well as compiling from the source and running in terminal (I believe The Mad Hattar did so for FreeBSD but he compiled and ran it from terminal which I am assuming is the one from 2009-2010 on Mac OSX.
Anyway crazy times. Even a mobile version exists in all likelyhood as one suggestion from an epic thread inferred could be done right around the time Satoshi was talking about iPhone (see last link at bottom) and if they would allow a front end version to run on an app
or even a
website for mobile. Well I know DVCs got trollkeep and that happens to have a WAP2 version of its smf (
https://trollkeep.com/smf/index.php?wap2), and I also believe they were discussing that the .zip downloads satoshi was linking from these very forums to the dl page would've been possible (because compression) to make into a mobile type version of Bitcoin - whatever it was at that 0.2/0.3 0.3.0 RC2 and finally changed to 1.3 (the third release, first out of beta) by mid 2010.
And in case satoshi was wondering about Apple approving of a Bitcoin client or something in its protocol as an app time has told that through the third party apps it approved to the iOS app store but also, core-0.8.6.0 released for devcoin on its official github has that approval in one way or another once you download it and open the folder core-0.8.6.0 for its source code as well as go to core-0.8.6.0 > share > certs and find this .pem extension file "BitcoinFoundation_Apple_Cert.pem" - here is its text:
Bag Attributes
friendlyName: Developer ID Application: BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC., THE
localKeyID: 6B 9C 6C A8 A5 73 70 70 E2 57 A3 49 D8 62 FB 97 C7 A5 5D 5E
subject=/UID=PBV4GLS9J4/CN=Developer ID Application: BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC., THE/OU=PBV4GLS9J4/O=BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC., THE/C=US
issuer=/CN=Developer ID Certification Authority/OU=Apple Certification Authority/O=Apple Inc./C=US
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----
Same kinda things you see all over web sites/pages with cert auths.
Even winbase.h is in some of the code I saw for a crypto (possibly early bitcoin) somewhere. And it's AddAtoms function is right in the original pre and post public release 2009-Feb 14, 2010 versions of Bitcoin as posted on github to see here:
So why doesn't anyone at least
pointer at this as a possible bookmark to a temporary place where a log.* file was made, a crash or forced shutdown occurred, and multiple versions unnamed and possibly later named but on the new "bitcoin2" or "irc.lfnet.org" (laslo's irc dedicated server) - or any other place - existed quietly long before publicly announced. Did we hear about bitcoin or see evidence in timestamps of its 2007 existence? No. Did satoshi say he began its design and some code in 2007 on bitcointalk? Yes.
Seeing is believing but so is logical reason.
If I said anything about a link to bitcointalk and 2009-2010 satoshi bitcointalk account posts its in here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12.0On a SIDE note, I'd like to add you really should go to devcoin/core github and download the 0.8.6.0 pre-release code and explore. It's not just devcoin/bitcoin in there but some of satoshi's original wxWidgets features as well as i0coin all over the place. One such place is in the "README_windows.txt" file for the folder called "core-0.8.6.0":
Bitcoin 0.8.5-1 BETA
Copyright (c) 2009-2013 Bitcoin and I0coin Developers
Distributed under the MIT/X11 software license, see the accompanying
file COPYING or http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php.
This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in
the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/). This product includes
cryptographic software written by Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com).
Intro
-----
Bitcoin is a free open source peer-to-peer electronic cash system that is
completely decentralized, without the need for a central server or trusted
parties. Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly
with each other, with the help of a P2P network to check for double-spending.
Setup
-----
Unpack the files into a directory and run bitcoin-qt.exe.
Bitcoin-Qt is the original Bitcoin client and it builds the backbone of the network.
However, it downloads and stores the entire history of Bitcoin transactions;
depending on the speed of your computer and network connection, the synchronization
process can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or more.
See the bitcoin wiki at:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page
for more help and information.
Still haven't seen Ixcoin anywhere but I have seen Ix in places that I have to figure out where in some bitcoin source code from wayback. Renaming doesn't mean new coin. At least by protocol. Block chain or
blockchain is stored in many DB, maybe some online, public, maybe some private, online, or stored offline. And may just on a node somewhere that hasn't been read properly but with a persistent signal that nodes will recognize one day and follow to create the master chain. Or whatever the core values satoshi's vision meant to keep forever. 0.1 is set in stone right? Well, then I guess its good other merge mined chains (Alternate chains) are there to help it evolve.
