0 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 27 Oct 2022 \ parent \ on: Are alternate Bitcoin implementations dangerous? bitcoin
The thing is: you can run your own implementation. No one stops you.
It just doesn't make sense since bitcoin is also based on consensus. So your implementation (or should we say, fork if you don't abide by the rules of core?) doesn't matter if it has no consensus and you just risk forking yourself away from the chain (assuming there are also miners who run your implementation).
Shaking your head about only one implementation being out there is the same as shaking your head that bitcoin woris only one chain with the most consensus behind it.
There is no cognitive dissonance at play here. Just pure game theory of bitcoin at work.
If you want to change the protocol, you have to contribute to core since that's the best way to make sure enough people will in the end actually run your code.
Just my 2 sats
The question I was trying to get at is whether we should spend time and effort trying to increase the percent of nodes/miners who use implementations other than Core (even though it increases the severity of a chain split).
Bitcoin is permission less, but it's also political.
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I think we should prevent the risks of having a single implementation (censorship, centralization) with repository mirrors, more transparent release process (don't know how transparent it already is), node signalling for features instead of only miners etc. for example.
But I think the solution is not to create multiple implementations which will be very hard to be 100% compatible with each other for ever while also making it harder to upgrade the network since now you need to maintain/care about multiple implementations.
You initiated a very good discussion, thank you. Here, have some more sats, the original post is "undervalued".
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Just saw my typo:
same as shaking your head that bitcoin woris only one chain with the most consensus behind it.
Wanted to say "that bitcoin works by having only one (valid) chain ..."
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