[Bitcoin-segwit2x] F2Pool backing out of NYA - Fork still happening?

[Dr Adam Back]

A lot of what you described doesn't work the way you seem to expect.

There's a few levels:

Mining economics: I do some mining, and there are a number of data
points from alt-coins that share mining algorithms: miners short / mid
term mine what is profitable. That is driven by relative price.
Difficulty adjusts to equilibrium.  This is a feature, it is the
incentive that secures blockchains. Bitcoin security works by
economically incentivised creation of valid blocks as measured by the
nodes on the network.

Nodes and wallets mechanically todays software: Existing full nodes
won't follow.  Most smart phone wallets will not automatically switch
but either ignore a new chain, stop functioning, go into some kind of
warning state pending bugfix, some older wallets may get stuck on
random chain. And because there is no proper replay protection
randomly transactions will be made on one or both chains unless mixed
with new coinbase over time.  That will be pretty disruptive because
people writing wallet software don't know what segwit2x code will be
as they keep changing.  Bitcoin cash changed up to 5days before
release.

Services: Also it's a big job to defend all existing all existing
services and wallets.  Never the less as both chains have value each
service and wallet must over time offer some solution even if it is
replay protected withdrawal.  So nothing is achieved in practice vs
proper replay protection other than disruption.

Due Care & safety: Doing reckless and risky things to the network may
not be a good advertisement for service or wallet.  Users will
research and make some decision about which wallets and services will
preserve their coins and allow them to split and sell or hold
whichever of the 3 or 4 spinoffs are created.  People will likely not
recommend software and services that promote dand advocated for
creating the disruption and risk.

Financial, support tickets: users will complain via support tickets
and formal complaints about experience and asset loss as that happens.

Would be interested in proponents views of how their companies (if
they have users) will handle this, and also how they suppose different
use cases from other services and wallets will interoperate.

It sort of feels like there is an expected game-theory reaction here
that no one is talking about, but maybe people have different views of
what the logical game theory is?

ps please trip replies list posts are bouncing as too large.

Adam

On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 2:20 AM, Ben Peters via Bitcoin-segwit2x
<bitcoin-segwit2x at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the
> NYA/Segwit2x endeavour. What is happening here is that an alternative,
> minimally modified, version of the Bitcoin code is being developed that will
> implement a change that has long been sought by the mining community and
> many in industry and beyond (a change that they presumably feel is important
> for the future success of Bitcoin and thus their respective investments).
>
> That candidate code will be offered to the miners and mining pools, who may
> or may not opt to apply hashing power to it. If they apply more than the
> threshold amount of hashing power, then that new code will effectively
> takeover from the previous consensus rule, and take most SPV wallets and
> economic activity along with it.
>
> Rather than lobbying this technical working group to “call off” their
> efforts, your time might be better spent lobbying the miners. The function
> of this group is to produce candidate code, thus fulfilling the obligations
> as set out under the NYA.
>