[Bitcoin-development] questions about bitcoin-XT code fork & non-consensus hard-fork

[seanl@literati.org (Sean Lynch)]

That's why I said "their money and...", but you're right, the "and" doesn't
need to be there. Just the money.

On Sun, Jun 28, 2015, 15:16 Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org> wrote:

> It's not the miners that count, rather than economic majority.  It's a
> surprising fact, but here's how it works: lets imagine 75% of the
> miners decided they'd change the economic rules, in a protocol
> incompatible way.  Result: the miners form a new alt-coin with no
> users.  Bitcoin difficulty adjusts, and carries on as if nothing
> happened.  The hostile miners earn 25 forkcoins which have  a market
> price of 0.  They are burning electricity so they either go bankrupt
> or the give up and rejoin the network.
>
> There's a lot to game theory that is subtle.  It could do with a FAQ
> writing on it really.
>
> Adam
>
> On 28 June 2015 at 23:04, Sean Lynch <seanl@literati.org> wrote:
> > By the way, "consensus" is a red herring thrown out by those who never
> want
> > there to be a fork. There can never be consensus for a fork, because
> > otherwise it wouldn't be a fork. Claiming there needs to be consensus is
> > just a way to try to make it look like any fork is somehow unilateral and
> > undemocratic. But to succeed, any fork by definition needs broad
> support. In
> > fact, it's about the most democratic you can get: people put their money
> and
> > their mining power on the fork they want. It's those opposing any fork
> who
> > are the authoritarians. Obviously, when you consider who's making the
> death
> > threats.
>
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