[Bitcoin-ml] The Blockchain Difficulty Information Paradox

Tom Zander tomz at freedommail.ch
Tue Oct 10 15:46:21 UTC 2017


On Tuesday, 10 October 2017 16:46:52 CEST G. Andrew Stone via bitcoin-ml 
wrote:
> I'd like to comment in general on the blockchain difficulty adjustment
> algorithms that many of you are working on.  But it got long so I put it
> in a Medium post:

Great post.

Quick comment; (edit; ok not so quick. Sorry).

> Therefore they are all subject to the blockchain mining information 
paradox and a “chain death” scenario is possible (as it is with Bitcoin by 
the way), in the absence of benevolent miners.

The question that this raises is if “chain death” is a problem or not.
I understand that people will immediately defend the idea based on their 
feeling of self-preservation. Or preservation of BCH in this case.

The question isn’t really limited to the “main” chain, though. Chain death 
is also about all the possible changes that can be made to it. Do we want 
the life-expentency to be guarenteed also of any and all chain-forks of BCH?

The ETH/ETC split was created with almost no miner backing, and it still 
exists today. This is not possible on Bitcoin today. It **is** possible on 
BCH.
Should we, as BCH, hard fork in something that is even 2% contentious, we 
are almost guarenteed to create a chain-split.

The 2016 block adjustment period kills the minority chains, that is one of 
its goals. Changing that will have huge economical implications in the long 
run.

What do others think?
-- 
Tom Zander
Blog: https://zander.github.io
Vlog: https://vimeo.com/channels/tomscryptochannel


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