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1 sat \ 4 replies \ @petertodd OP 21 Oct 2022 \ parent \ on: I'm Peter Todd, cryptochronomancer/web-π dev, AMA bitcoin
...and it has worked for the endless hard forks in ETH, XMR, ZEC, etc.
It also has to work for Bitcoin at some point: we need a hard fork to fix the Year 2106 problem. Though that hard fork will be particularly easy, as the old Bitcoin will simply stop mining blocks and cease to function when the 32-bit time field overflows.
Hard forking is a social problem. A hard one. But almost certainly not impossible.
No I think you misunderstood the question. You mention ETH, XMR, ZEC, but none of those are Bitcoin. I asked if a hard fork could ever be Bitcoin.
I suppose I could interpret your answer to mean that we're talking about intentionally creating an altcoin, but it wouldn't get to take the Bitcoin name with it.
As for the 2106 problem, that sounds like maybe you're saying "A hard fork works if all previous version of core that the new version would be incompatible with, are inoperable and broken", but this second interpretation of your answer would hard fork with the first interpretation.
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You mention ETH, XMR, ZEC, but none of those are Bitcoin.
But they are cryptocurrencies that have hard forked repeatedly. Not a situation identical to Bitcoin. But they show it's possible technically. So it's plausible Bitcoin could create a social consensus for a hard fork. Difficult. But plausible.
The 2106 problem is precisely the type of case where creating that social consensus should be easy: the alternative to a hard fork to fix it is Bitcoin stops working entirely.
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I don't know how too much about XMR and ZEC in regards to their improvement process, but I do know the reason ETH gets away with it is because ETH doesn't have social consensus at all. Vitalik implemented the difficulty bomb from the very beginning and anyone against Vitalik had to hard fork (Ethereum Classic). So I don't think that one was a very good example.
From the examples of hard forking altcoins, what is in their social consensus that you foresee Bitcoin adopting, or otherwise what unique version of hard forking social consensus do you foresee Bitcoin using?
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XMR simply has a clear social consensus that they do hard forks frequently.
Look, obviously exactly how we might reach that point with Bitcoin is unclear until it happens. But the fact is it's technically possible. Just need the right situation to do it.
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