Bitcoin Core Releases Statement on Hard vs Soft Forks
Bitcoin Core, an “open source software project that is a direct descendant of the original Bitcoin implementation”, released a statement late last week on its website. The main focus was how Bitcoin consensus rules were changed, which is typically through soft forks and hard forks. Hard forks and soft forks do virtually the same thing, so Bitcoin Core argues that soft forks are to be preferred as they do not cause the amount of harm on the Bitcoin network as a hard fork can potentially do since users can choose to upgrade to new features when they want to, or remain or the current Bitcoin....
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Since the beginning of the development of Segregated Witness, an increasing number of alternative Bitcoin hard fork supporters have criticized the implementation process of soft forks on Bitcoin Core, claiming that Core developers have a complete monopoly over the process. Former Bitcoin Core developer Jeff Garzik and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin particularly stated that proposed soft forks have to undergo a majority consensus among Bitcoin Core developers that ultimately decide whether a soft fork becomes implemented into the BItcoin network. “Soft forks very specifically, from an....
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has summarized the implications of soft and hard forks amid growing tensions surrounding Bitcoin’s future. “...There is an essential difference between hard forks and soft forks: hard forks are opt-in, whereas soft forks allow users no “opting” at all,” he wrote earlier this week. The Bitcoin price was under downward pressure Friday as the community awaits Chinese regulatory announcements and indecisiveness over SegWit and Bitcoin Unlimited continues. After Unlimited succumbed to a bug earlier in the week, rhetoric between the opposing sides became even....
As opposing sides in Bitcoin's long-lasting scaling dispute seem to be inching closer, one of the remaining sources of contention is not whether, but how to achieve a small block size bump. TheBitcoin Core development team wants to increase the maximum block capacity through a Segregated Witness soft fork, which has since been embraced by a large part of Bitcoin’s development community and a significant segment of the Bitcoin industry. Others, like CEO of major payment processor BitPay Stephen Pair, believe the perceived benefits of soft forks over hard forks are being overstated. Speaking....
Bitcoin Core developer and Bloq co-founder Jeff Garzik expresses his opposition on soft forks and its mechanism in which a few group of developers are granted the authority to decide major economic changes which are applied and implemented into the Bitcoin network. To begin with, soft forks are forward compatible in the sense that old nodes will recognize new blocks as valid. A soft fork requires only a majority of the miners to upgrade to the network rules or face security reduction. Centralization. The centralization issue emerges during the process of submitting and implementing a soft....
Hard forks are a rather contentious issue in Bitcoin. The controversy surrounding hard forks can be seen most prominently in the context of Bitcoin XT 's implementation of BIP 101. While there have been successful Bitcoin hard forks in the past, the problem with hard forks of the Bitcoin blockchain is that they're, well, hard. Any change to the Bitcoin protocol that requires a hard fork essentially requires near-complete consensus to avoid a potential blockchain split. For example, there are many individuals in the Bitcoin development community who do not believe that BIP 101's use of a 75....