Regarding to splitting of the Bitcoin Blockchain.
7
votes
3answers
287 views
How is a hard fork resolved?
In March 2013 there was a fork following the v0.8 release. The issue was resolved rather efficiently, as explained in the post-mortem report. However in this process there were winners and losers: the ...
2
votes
0answers
49 views
Is Bitcoin really decentralized? [duplicate]
To quote the Bitcoin wiki (emphasis added):
Bitcoin is an experimental, decentralized digital currency
This of course is repeated on and on in the mainstream media/blogosphere to the point where ...
4
votes
1answer
103 views
What is a hardfork?
When people talk about possible changes to how Bitcoin works they sometimes say a particular change would require a hardfork. What does that mean? Can a hardfork cause problems?
5
votes
4answers
425 views
What keeps a dominant Bitcoin client vendor with the majority of the market share from unilaterally changing the protocol?
I've been asking this in the comments, but I'll be more direct.
If a third-party Bitcoin client, say "iBitcoin" (for example), becomes the dominant client by acquiring most of the market share, what ...
3
votes
2answers
439 views
What happens to my bitcoins if there's a permanent fork in the chain?
Let's say the year is 2034 (optimistic?) and the New New World has adopted Bitcoin as its currency, and now there's a civil war, and naturally the two sides want to have their own version of Bitcoin ...
3
votes
0answers
51 views
Can the Bitcoin protocol be configured to *never* rollback after a certain block? [duplicate]
Is it possible to hard code a block and its block hash into the client so that the block chain will never diverge from the main chain past that block?
My thought is that this will improve confidence ...
2
votes
1answer
77 views
Is there a reason pooled miners should revert to 0.7 due to the fork?
Can miners who mine in a pool ignore the request to revert their bitcoind to 0.7, and stay with 0.8? As far as I know, it's the pool that counts in this case.
(Except P2Pool, which behaves a bit ...
7
votes
1answer
471 views
How was the blockchain's “hard fork” automatically resolved?
As a result of an "official" change in back-end databases from BDB in v0.7 to LevelDB in v0.8, in addition to an increase (by some mining pools) to a higher block size limit, there was recent "hard ...
7
votes
2answers
321 views
What block numbers & hashes were discarded by the March 2013 blockchain fork?
When exactly (GMT) were these blocks mined?
4
votes
1answer
161 views
In the blockchain split of March 2013, where should miners mine, 0.7 or 0.8?
I want a clear cut answer + references so they is no confusion.
Today March 12 2013, on which fork should miners mine, 0.7 or 0.8?
11
votes
2answers
450 views
What should I do about the March 12th 2013 blockchain fork?
Reddit/r/bitcoin is flooding with news that the Bitcoin blockchain has forked, in that versions 0.7 and 0.8 are accepting different blockchains. What does this mean for the users?
8
votes
2answers
175 views
Given the recent <0.8 bug, when can we safely have larger block sizes?
Given the <0.8 bug and subsequent fork happened because of a particularly large block, does this mean that large blocks can not be used until the large majority of the community switches to 0.8?
...
3
votes
1answer
70 views
How is it possible to detect system wide segmentation?
In this post, MoonShadow says it's easy to detect system wide segmentation.
Yet a system wide segmentation is fairly easy to detect, the current client just doesn't do it. If code implementing ...
3
votes
1answer
94 views
Is there a list of “hardforks that will never happen in Bitcoin”?
The Hardfork Wishlist lists some fork-causing changes that might actually get introduced (e.g. adding more decimal digits to allow units smaller than a satoshi).
Is there a similar list of forks that ...
2
votes
2answers
88 views
Could many large forks cause a DoS attack on the miner?
Suppose it was possible to influence a miner to create many forks. My understanding is that a miner won't retransmit the fork, but will track it internally.
Where is this information saved in a ...
1
vote
2answers
122 views
Without being continuously connected to the network, how can I protect from Double Spend attacks?
I'm a vendor who is interested in protecting myself from double spend attacks.
What software, configuration, connectivity, or timeout is required to mitigate this risk?
Namely, how would I protect ...
5
votes
2answers
84 views
When will a block not be forwarded?
I'm currently trying to detect blockchain forks and I noticed that even when dumping all blocks I get to a separate file I seem to miss a few.
Specifically I'm looking for the blocks marked as ...
0
votes
3answers
296 views
Is Proof of Stake a hard-fork?
Proof of Stake is a proposed modification to the Bitcoin protocol.
maaku claimed that it doesn't require a hard fork / alt chain.
Is this true?
3
votes
2answers
395 views
Getting orphaned Blocks from the Blockchain
I'm very interested in doing some analysis of orphaned blocks, but to do so I'd have to have a good way of accessing them. Blockchain.info seems like a good place to start but I don't want to abuse ...
2
votes
1answer
182 views
Are there proposed hardfork changes that couldn't be made if the market was filled with ASIC miners?
Suppose a year from now most of the hashrate is being produced by ASICs.
Bitcoin is not feature-complete yet. Out of the changes in the hardfork wishlist, would any of these changes be ...
6
votes
2answers
248 views
Bitcoin client behavior in event of a fork
What happens when a forked chain becomes longer than the main block chain?
Let's assume the forked chain that just became longer has no transactions in it, so it is as if every transaction in the ...
5
votes
1answer
283 views
Which blocks get to be checkpoints?
Which blocks get to be checkpoints, and why is one block chosen to be a checkpoint, rather than another block? And where can I find a list of checkpoint blocks?
2
votes
2answers
245 views
How would one inject a blockchain fork to the Bitcoin network?
For theoretical purposes, how would one inject a blockchain fork in to the Bitcoin network? For example, lets say we have a small chain of blocks prepared in a program that is not a standard client / ...
9
votes
2answers
320 views
How often forks occur?
How often do forks occur in the block chain? I'm interested in the small, one block forks that happen when two miners create a block at the similar time.
9
votes
1answer
344 views
Strange transaction (block 71036)
What happened to this transaction?
Can someone explain it?
http://blockexplorer.com/t/9eHTFRi3Qq
10
votes
3answers
276 views
What happens if the developers make a controversial change to the “standard” client?
One criticism I commonly hear of Bitcoin is that it merely transfers trust from some sort of central bank or government entity to the developers of the main project. Can anyone provide a clean ...
