Bitcoin Hard Forks May Become Safer With User Voting

Bitcoin Hard Forks May Become Safer With User Voting

Up to this point, the main way to judge support for a change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules has been miner voting. Miners are able to broadcast support for changes to the Bitcoin protocol via coinbase transactions, and these messages of support are tabulated in an effort to judge the level of support among those who are theoretically incentivized to....


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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....

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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