How would this affect the network?

[ArnoldChippy]

Reading the MaidSafe forum, someone asked how its network would cope if a government or other entity effectively and quietly cut off communications between countries or continents and so created two or more unlinked networks.

So applying the question to Bitcoin, when eventually reconnected, how would these networks join back together and reconcile transactions with one another?

[1715403401]

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[1715403401]

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[Elwar]

Reading the MaidSafe forum, someone asked how its network would cope if a government or other entity effectively and quietly cut off communications between countries or continents and so created two or more unlinked networks.

So applying the question to Bitcoin, when eventually reconnected, how would these networks join back together and reconcile transactions with one another?

quietly?

like nobody would notice?

[ArnoldChippy]

Reading the MaidSafe forum, someone asked how its network would cope if a government or other entity effectively and quietly cut off communications between countries or continents and so created two or more unlinked networks.

So applying the question to Bitcoin, when eventually reconnected, how would these networks join back together and reconcile transactions with one another?

quietly?

like nobody would notice?

Didn't broadcast or forewarn of their intention to do it.

[Elwar]

Reading the MaidSafe forum, someone asked how its network would cope if a government or other entity effectively and quietly cut off communications between countries or continents and so created two or more unlinked networks.

So applying the question to Bitcoin, when eventually reconnected, how would these networks join back together and reconcile transactions with one another?

quietly?

like nobody would notice?

Didn't broadcast or forewarn of their intention to do it.

A mass uprising by the people.

The difficulty to get a block would likely be too high for the cut off country and it would likely take weeks for them to process a single block.

[ArnoldChippy]

Reading the MaidSafe forum, someone asked how its network would cope if a government or other entity effectively and quietly cut off communications between countries or continents and so created two or more unlinked networks.

So applying the question to Bitcoin, when eventually reconnected, how would these networks join back together and reconcile transactions with one another?

quietly?

like nobody would notice?

Didn't broadcast or forewarn of their intention to do it.

A mass uprising by the people.

The difficulty to get a block would likely be too high for the cut off country and it would likely take weeks for them to process a single block.

Would the Bitcoin network still function normaly within that country?

Assuming that it did and was without connection to the larger network long enough for some transactions to occur and be confirmed before joining back, then is that a scenario allowed for in the protocol?

[Elwar]

Reading the MaidSafe forum, someone asked how its network would cope if a government or other entity effectively and quietly cut off communications between countries or continents and so created two or more unlinked networks.

So applying the question to Bitcoin, when eventually reconnected, how would these networks join back together and reconcile transactions with one another?

quietly?

like nobody would notice?

Didn't broadcast or forewarn of their intention to do it.

A mass uprising by the people.

The difficulty to get a block would likely be too high for the cut off country and it would likely take weeks for them to process a single block.

Would the Bitcoin network still function normaly within that country?

Assuming that it did and was without connection to the larger network long enough for some transactions to occur and be confirmed before joining back, then is that a scenario allowed for in the protocol?

Any transaction made in the smaller network would be ignored when joining back in because the blocks found would be after the blocks found on the larger network.

[QuestionAuthority]

That's kind of an esoteric problem like what would happen to Bitcoin after an air burst EMP exploded over your country. The last thing you should be worrying about at that point is Bitcoin. Any country that cuts off outside communication for any period of time is about to do something really stupid involving guns and death.

[DannyHamilton]

Completely isolating the internet within a country is an unrealistic thing to accomplish.  It would involve cutting off ALL methods of communications:

• Telephone
• Radio (including hobbyists)
• Television
• Carrier Pigeon
• Flag Semafore
• Probably other communication systems I haven't thought of

But purely as a thought experiment:

As long as there was still an internal intranet and there were enough individuals on that internal intranet running full nodes and mining, bitcoin would still continue to operate.  Depending on the amount of hash power that was running on that intranet, it could take hours, days, or even months for transactions to confirm.

Eventually, if the intranet was re-connected to the world wide internet, there would be a massive blockchain reorganization for everyone in the cut off intranet.  All of their confirmed transactions would become unconfirmed.  All block rewards that any of their miners earned would vanish.  Any transaction that included any value from any of those block rewards would become invalid and would vanish. The remaining transactions would have to be re-confirmed on the full network.

In Satoshi's own words back in 2010:

It's hard to imagine the Internet getting segmented airtight.  It would have to be a country deliberately and totally cutting itself off from the rest of the world.

Any node with access to both sides would automatically flow the block chain over, such as someone getting around the blockade with a dial-up modem or sat-phone.  It would only take one node to do it.  Anyone who wants to keep doing business would be motivated.

If the network is segmented and then recombines, any transactions in the shorter fork that were not also in the longer fork are released into the transaction pool again and are eligible to get into future blocks.  Their number of confirmations would start over.

If anyone took advantage of the segmentation to double-spend, such that there are different spends of the same money on each side, then the double-spends in the shorter fork lose out and go to 0/unconfirmed and stay that way.

It wouldn't be easy to take advantage of the segmentation to double-spend.  If it's impossible to communicate from one side to the other, how are you going to put a spend on each side?  If there is a way, then probably someone else is also using it to flow the block chain over.

You would usually know whether you're in the smaller segment.  For example, if your country cuts itself off from the rest of the world, the rest of the world is the larger segment.  If you're in the smaller segment, you should assume nothing is confirmed.

[Flashman]

Depends really which countries.

There would be quite a number with no pools worth speaking of, and probably no large solo concerns. So if they were cut off, all their miners would drop off the foreign pools and all the nodes would just get a huge backlog of unconfirmed tx. Provided, nobody does something stupid like think "Hey, we need to process these tx" and get up a temporary pool. Then when the rest of the network reconnects the backlog would be processed. Otherwise, any tx that do get processed will be orphaned with the blocks they are in.

Where it would get "interesting" is if maybe China got cut off, and because of cross border pooling, it would be hard to tell if you were on the winning or losing side of the deal. i.e. the network hash left on the network might only be 40% of it, and you would be unsure if maybe 5%, 10%, 20% was cut off from outside China pools, whether it's reconnecting inside China, or what is happening, same if you were inside China and looking at only 40%.

Also could happen with north american outage maybe, not sure.

At a quick spitball, though the exact figure is debatable. I'd say that if you are on the side of the split where network hash is 30% or less, the responsible thing to do would be to turn your miners off. You will not gain anything, and by reducing hash further you prevent tx being processed and thus orphaned, so are doing least damage, and it's more to your personal benefit to at least save on the electricity at this point.

However, over about 30% without any information about what is happening, then it may be wiser to keep the miners spinning. There could be a good chunk of hashpower "disabled" by the split, and it may appear on your side or the other side, or not at all. It's also possible that certain countries getting cut off, could cause more fracturing of the internet than just a 2 way split. i.e. 3 or 4 way splits. In that situation, 30% might produce the longest chain, make the most blocks, and be the "winner" when everything gets back together again.

[DannyHamilton]

any tx that do get processed will be orphaned with the blocks they are in.

Unless the transactions included value from an orphaned block reward, the transactions in the block would simply be returned to the unconfirmed pool.

[Elwar]

• Telephone
• Radio (including hobbyists)
• Television
• Carrier Pigeon
• Flag Semafore
• Probably other communication systems I haven't thought of

True, Andreas spoke about this on the Joe Rogan show. Talking about how people in isolated countries would take their short wave radio and go to the train track to hook up to it as an antenna, send their message then unhook and retreat to where they were before.

Flag semafore could send a message long distance over several hops faster than the earlier Internet connections.

[newIndia]

Reading the MaidSafe forum, someone asked how its network would cope if a government or other entity effectively and quietly cut off communications between countries or continents and so created two or more unlinked networks.

So applying the question to Bitcoin, when eventually reconnected, how would these networks join back together and reconcile transactions with one another?

In practical life, probably North Korea experiences a similar scenario. But, I dont think there is an Bitcoiner in North Korea as I read "For the average North Korean, the Internet doesn’t exist".

Source: http://www.fastcolabs.com/3036049/what-its-like-to-use-north-koreas-internet

[fabiola!]

• Telephone
• Radio (including hobbyists)
• Television
• Carrier Pigeon
• Flag Semafore
• Probably other communication systems I haven't thought of

True, Andreas spoke about this on the Joe Rogan show. Talking about how people in isolated countries would take their short wave radio and go to the train track to hook up to it as an antenna, send their message then unhook and retreat to where they were before.

Flag semafore could send a message long distance over several hops faster than the earlier Internet connections.

I think the Great Wall of China is the first known example of flag semafore?

[Elwar]

I think the Great Wall of China is the first known example of flag semafore?

Could be, I didn't know they had that set up. They could have had bitcoins back then.

[fabiola!]

I think the Great Wall of China is the first known example of flag semafore?

Could be, I didn't know they had that set up. They could have had bitcoins back then.

When was the first computer ever built? Didn't they find a really old roman computer-like system buried somewhere? Or underwater?

[rugrats]

Reading the MaidSafe forum, someone asked how its network would cope if a government or other entity effectively and quietly cut off communications between countries or continents and so created two or more unlinked networks.

So applying the question to Bitcoin, when eventually reconnected, how would these networks join back together and reconcile transactions with one another?

This is an interesting question - there is a precedent for this. Last year, the Syrian government took down the entire coutnry's internet for two days. However, not every country's internet infrasture is as simple and centralized. In countries with more complex infrastructures, tweaking router configurations alone is not enough to turn off the internet. Fiber optics gateways must also be physically cut, along with signal jamming at border areas.

Renesys took a close look at this subject a couple of years ago, and computed the risk factors of countries going offline. In the map below, the green spectrum indicates a country's susceptibility to disconnection - dark green for high risk, and light green for very low risk. The firm argued that light green countries are highly resistant to complete internet shutdown.



As you can see, most first world countries (including G7 countries) fare well in their estimation.

I wonder if there are any Syrian forum members around that could share their experience in the wake of last year's two days' blackout.