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CUSF will be the greatest example of why a miner activated soft fork is not an actual activation.
Why can't you just undo soft forks? Because nodes enforce the rules of soft forks and undoing those rules would require everyone to coordinate i.e. a hard fork.
But what if nodes aren't enforcing a soft forks rules? Well then it could be undone easily by the miner coordination.
Well the whole fork drama of 2017 was a miner lead soft fork essentially that was challenged by a user activated soft fork. What that means is that on paper 90% of the hashing power by mining pool supported segwit 2x. And it was opposed by a grassroots and very loud user movement that would block the transmission of any segwit 2x blocks.
Miners had a lot of potential revenue on the table that could be lost within the days in which that would be resolved. Users (holders) on the other hand could sustain such a consensus crisis for weeks. But don't think the solution was easy this was very chaotic and we don't know what would have happened if the mining pools had not folded early.
On the Bitcoin cash front it was a minor-led hard fork. It was the signed by bitmain. and they changed the difficulty algorithm in order to keep the chain alive because they knew they had a minority. But if they believed they had a majority of hashing power they could have basically forked the network and taking the hashing power. It would have been a much different situation.
Without consensus from the user base it could lead to multiple versions of Bitcoin and if the one we like has less hashing power then a lesser version it could be very chaotic. Eventually you might settle on the markets. Exchanges will have to choose which fork has which ticker. And the price would swing wildly.
Finally if the miner lead Hard fork or soft fork won both the ticker and the majority of the hashing power, and hodlers tolerated it. Then it would set a precedent for miners to lead upgrades. This could lead to a whole new development path for Bitcoin one where miners upgraded in whatever direction increase their profitability or perceived profitability. They're economic incentives are historically different than that of hodlers. The assumptions that the market has of bitcoins stability would be significantly changed. We don't know what that roadmap looks like. We do know that it could lead to mev as well, miner extracted value which leads to centralization of pools as seen in other chains.
Basically there is a long list of unknowns and it would probably change a lot of assumptions in bitcoin. Destroying bitcoins lead is probably not off the table.
The good news is I don't think it has any consensus among holders.
@psztorc has lost all credibility to me ever since I hard him being disingenuous when discussing proposals other than Drivechains. If he's dishonest about competing proposals, how can I trust him when discussing his own stuff?
Wow, omega bait huh? Can't believe that's actually your opinion, because if it is then you are really misinformed, in any case this type of flame war is not really welcome.
How about we have a constructive debate instead? Something that doesn't entail calling the work of lots of people 'nothing' or 'bullshit'.
Love your show dude! So glad you're here! You have a great quirky show, ask good questions, let people talk a lot, and keep it at a level us plebs can understand.
Honestly I listen to most of the more technical podcasts too, but yours and Bitcoin Audible I think are the two best for trying to help normies and maxis understand what the hell is going on in Bitcoin dev space, and why it's important.
Thank you sir, much appreciated! Had a pretty rough year with a couple of nerve-breaking moments, it's good to see some appreciation too. It's what motivates me to keep going.
But why not drive Drivechains on Monero first ?
The way I understand it, it will attract more miners to their chain.
and when Monero is with more hash-power we just migrate/drivechain Bitcoin to the more secure chain.
Bitcoin miners are too busy to merge-mine Namecon at the moment.
Bitcoin miners are too busy to merge-mine Namecon at the moment.
[meta]Will we have our first boost war?