[Bitcoin-development] UUID to identify chains (payment protocol and elsewhere)

[Luke-Jr]

On Wednesday, May 22, 2013 2:20:22 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Melvin Carvalho
> 
> <melvincarvalho at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 22 May 2013 16:07, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik at exmulti.com> wrote:
> >> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 6:27 AM, Melvin Carvalho
> >> 
> >> <melvincarvalho at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Some out of band algo/hash could work so long as there was a one to
> >> > one relationship between the described object and the UUID.  In this
> >> > case the
> >> > gensis block may not uniquely identify a coin.
> >> 
> >> What does this mean?  It seems extremely unlikely that two different
> >> genesis blocks will have the same hash.
> > 
> > Two coin ecosystems could have the same genesis block
> 
> That has really, really bad side effects.  The whole point of the
> bitcoin consensus algorithm is to avoid situations like this.
> 
> We don't want to encourage that behavior with code.

In some cases, multiple currencies can use the same blockchain (not just the 
singular genesis block). This use case *is* something we want to encourage - 
no reason for people to make an entirely new blockchain if their altcoin fits 
within the scope of Bitcoin or another existing altchain.