Dead by 2106

[Heart18]

Wow we are only at 2020 and we are already thinking about the problem on 2106?
We are still facing so many tragic problems on this year I think we have plenty of time to fix this problem and focus on other more important things that matter right now.
I am not saying that it isn't important but to be honest I don't think we should really discuss it right now because it is still too early and besides 86 years from now do we even know if we are still alive at that time?

You are very much right. We don't need to tackle this things right now as we have much necessary things to deal with. I think we need to focus now on how to survive in this crisis. The safety health protocols and other guidelines and of course, the most awaited vaccine that could possibly end this battle should be the first thing in mind. I can't figure out yet, if we are still alive on that year 2106 - too hard to predict what will happened next to us. But one thing is for sure, as long as bitcoin is existing, I can still earn and help my family through my hardworks in doing every tasks that I have here. And with that, I am forever grateful.

[1715539037]

1715539037

[MCobian]

No one can predict the future with accuracy, moreover predict Bitcoin in 80 years. I think it's too early to discuss regarding this matter,
after all, no one can confirm that Bitcoin dies in 2106. I myself still doubt that Bitcoin is possible will die due to a bug in the code in 2106.
It is even possible that Bitcoin will die before that, in my opinion it is more productive if we talk about the future of Bitcoin for the next 5 years.

[Artemis3]

Well it should be fixed. Carefully plan when how to execute it, and do it. No need to leave baggage to the future generations; "i won't be here" is no excuse for leaving unfixed things that could be fixed.

Or, do you think those Roman bridge builders though their creation should crumble by the time they died? Many are still in use today, couple thousand years later... And that was before modern construction techniques and materials (they did invent concrete, more or less).

There is time to plan it, but there is no reason to ignore it. Same as the quantum resistant changes.

[JuSayCo]

Well, as for me, this kind of problem will be easily fix on that year. You know why?Because  I strongly believe that most people on 2106 are more knowledgeable in IT thing. And probably the world then is highly digital.
But, seriously, nobody can guess what will happen 86 years from now. We don't know either if we will be spared from this covid-19 as positive cases got worsen everyday. We just  be thankful then, that we are still breathing, working and earning here in Cryptoworld or blockchain.

[maydna]

I think that will not be a problem because I am sure that the bitcoin developer will get the best solution to solve the problem. Besides that, 2106 is still far away, and we don't know if we are still alive or not, but we can tell our children or grandchild about that, so they will know what they need to do.

Even if bitcoin is dead by 2106, I am sure that we can have other things that can be the new ways, whether for making money or have an investment. Perhaps, we don't know what solution will be applied in the future because we have much time to research and check the code on how to fix the problem. So we'd better focus on the situations right now, and let the developer solve it while we can invite more people to join in the bitcoin world.

[royalfestus]

I think bitcoin had recovered from previous hardfork and i dont see any hardfork in bitcoin soon. All the hardfork had failed and this is a resounding warning to others who might want to go that path. 2106 is very far away and I dont think we need to be concern too much of that now, i trust the team behind this technology than any other.

[k@suy]

I think bitcoin had recovered from previous hardfork and i dont see any hardfork in bitcoin soon. All the hardfork had failed and this is a resounding warning to others who might want to go that path. 2106 is very far away and I dont think we need to be concern too much of that now, i trust the team behind this technology than any other.

Although what the poster said is just a prediction, still nobody knows if it will be happen someday or not but if you will ask me, I think if there is no cure for covid 19, covid 19 will be the reason of losing the bitcoin in the run that's why I am praying that somebody could find the cure in order for us to continie our normal daily living.

[budi691]

86 years is a long time, maybe some of us have been through it, 2009 to 2020 alone there are 2 hard forks to solve this problem, I'm sure we don't have to worry until 2106 is still very long, there must be lots of great people who are able to fix bug problems ,

[DougM]

this sounds very wrong to me:

The bug is simple. Bitcoin blocks are the containers within which transactions are stored. Each Bitcoin block has a number tracking how many blocks come before it. But because of a limitation revolving around how block height numbers are stored, Bitcoin will run out of block numbers after block number 5101541.

for starters bitcoin blocks do NOT store their height anywhere except a push of an integer to the stack inside their signature script (after activation of BIP-34) which can be as big as up to 4 bytes and can be as big as 2,147,483,647.
additionally Wuillies tweet doesn't even mention block height. it is talking about block timestamps that will overflow and although i am not sure about the details of that but i can tell it has nothing to do with height.

Yes, I was thinking the very same thing as pooya87...'height' or block number didn't exist until an non-critical field was added via BIP-34 starting at Block number 227,835 (timestamp 2013-03-24 15:49:13 GMT) which was last version 1 block.  Until that point the block height was simply derived by counting up from zero for the genesis block via the blockchain:  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0034

Specification
Treat transactions with a version greater than 1 as non-standard (official Satoshi client will not mine or relay them).
Add height as the first item in the coinbase transaction's scriptSig, and increase block version to 2. The format of the height is "serialized CScript" -- first byte is number of bytes in the number (will be 0x03 on main net for the next 150 or so years with 223-1 blocks), following bytes are little-endian representation of the number (including a sign bit). Height is the height of the mined block in the block chain, where the genesis block is height zero (0).

I can't find any historical discussion this topic. Can someone actually point out where this hard limit on the max block number is and why it would take a hard fork to actually fix it? 

[o_e_l_e_o]

which can be as big as up to 4 bytes and can be as big as 2,147,483,647.

Can someone actually point out where this hard limit on the max block number is and why it would take a hard fork to actually fix it?

Block headers contain the "Time" field, which is a 4 byte (32 bit) integer and represents the Unix time at which the block is being hashed, within the limit of the median time of the 11 previous blocks and the network adjusted time plus 2 hours.

When that 32 bit number hits capacity - which is actually double what pooya87 has said at 4,294,967,295 (I'll discuss why in a second) - then it will be impossible to hash a block which fulfills the criteria for an acceptable timestamp I laid out just above. As a result, all blocks will be rejected as invalid. This is a limit on time and will be hit on February 7th 2106, rather than a limit on block numbers.

The reason that the 32 bit number is double what pooya87 stated is because the timestamp is an unsigned integer ranging from 0 to 4,294,967,295, as opposed to a signed integer ranging from -2,147,483,647 to 2,147,483,647. It is essentially the Year 2038 problem, but offset by an additional 68 years. So instead of happening 68 years after 1970, bitcoin will be affected an additional 68 years later in 2106.

[kryptqnick]

In other words, at a block height roughly 86 years into the future, it will be impossible to produce any new blocks.

Then let the people discuss about this in some 80-85 years from now.
Until then there are plenty other important changes / improvements to be made for a better Bitcoin.

If newspapers bring up this problem because they don't have anything better to write about, should we really do the same?!

I did not know about this bug, but it sounds like something that requires a fix and is not likely to cause opposition. And indeed, if there's so much time until it becomes urgent, I realize why this issue is not being brought up: a hard fork like that will be largely supported when the time comes, but right now it just doesn't seem important enough. I think Bitcoin has to solve other issues or it will be pretty much dead way before 2106. For instance, the scalability issue is something that is going to prevent Bitcoin from becoming widely used as money since expensive and slow transactions won't suffice.

[cryptoperkele]

Honestly, we have no idea what kind of technical revolutions there will be in 2040 and this is easy to fix. And almost all in here will be dead by 2106 anyway so i don't think this
 should be a major concern us at all.

[khaled0111]

Well, this is an issue the next generations will have to fix supposing that bitcoin will still be used.
According to the linked article, all it requires to fix the bug is a hatd fork which is not really a big issue and am sure there will be many of them before we reach 2106.
I wonder if bitcoin devs will consider fixing this bug if a harfork will be required for another reason before that date?

[kezinaur14]

There is no problem that cannot be resolved, so don't worry about it, why say tens of years from now, why do you have to later if today it could die, you don't have to overdo it to analyze something that is not certain, bitcoin still looks fine even up to 2106

Yeah, sometimes the especulation game goes too far into irrelevancy, what does it matter what will it look in 100 years, as long as it isn't detrimental as a whole, I'm up for it man.

[pooya87]

a push of an integer to the stack inside their signature script (after activation of BIP-34) which can be as big as up to 4 bytes and can be as big as 2,147,483,647.

The reason that the 32 bit number is double what pooya87 stated is because the timestamp is an unsigned integer ranging from 0 to 4,294,967,295, as opposed to a signed integer ranging from -2,147,483,647 to 2,147,483,647. It is essentially the

you and i are talking about two entirely different things. the timestamp of a block is indeed a UInt32 and is actually interpreted as a Int64 as far as i can tell from the source code (and thanks for the explanation, i didn't know about the median time) but what i was talking about was the block height being pushed to the stack inside the signature script (ie. BIP-34). and positive numbers on the stack (that need to be popped and converted to integer) can not be bigger than Int32.Max value or 0x7fffffff because they can not be bigger than 4 bytes and if they set their highest bit (from 2147483648 to 4294967295) they become negative and that would be invalid as a block height.

[polarityexchange]

Given the sheer amount of time between now and then I guarantee this will have been fixed by then.

I certainly wont even be alive by then anyways

[dansus021]

oh well, add another bug fix to the hard fork wishlist. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork_Wishlist

we've got 80 years to sort this one out. i'll be dead by then.

Surely does 


But yeah with bitcoin user today any fork will be notice mostl big exchange big miningpool will know it first because they have a team right. and the other hand maybe there's coin will replace the bitcoin by that time

[Nhor1011]

86 years is a long time, maybe some of us have been through it, 2009 to 2020 alone there are 2 hard forks to solve this problem, I'm sure we don't have to worry until 2106 is still very long, there must be lots of great people who are able to fix bug problems ,

We are already dead that time and if that problem in bitcoin will really exist then i think a new coming generation will solve that issue if they want bitcoin to continue alive and become useful in crypto planet for a long time.

[o_e_l_e_o]

you and i are talking about two entirely different things.

Yeah, my bad. I read your post earlier in the day on mobile, then came back later to write my post on desktop, and mashed it together in my head with my reply regarding timestamps which I had been thinking about.

(and thanks for the explanation, i didn't know about the median time)

Relevant code: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/b75f2ad72db6db93665c66279a4c9e8d5d89f027/src/validation.cpp#L3506-L3512

but what i was talking about was the block height being pushed to the stack inside the signature script (ie. BIP-34).

So, am I right in saying then that there is also a hard limit on block height, at 2,147,483,647? Some quick back-of-the-envelope math suggests that we will hit that limit somewhere around the year 42,906. Better start working on a fix ASAP.

[wxa7115]

Wow we are only at 2020 and we are already thinking about the problem on 2106?
We are still facing so many tragic problems on this year I think we have plenty of time to fix this problem and focus on other more important things that matter right now.
I am not saying that it isn't important but to be honest I don't think we should really discuss it right now because it is still too early and besides 86 years from now do we even know if we are still alive at that time?

That should show you how afraid people are of the technology that they are trying to look at anything that can make it fall, but as some people have stated before that is not really an issue, the developers at that time will fix it and we need to leave it to them because it doesn't really make a lot of sense to try to fix it now when we know what the problem is, how far away it is, and we have a lot of other things to concentrate on.

But you should not be surprised that those that hate bitcoin will use this as a way to try to show that if there is a bug like that in the code then some other things could have slipped in and that no one has found yet, obviously for us that notion is ridiculous but you can be sure they're going to try to use that to scare people away from this market.