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Best explanation of how this will work is on their site: "By mining with Bitcoin XT you will produce blocks with a new version number. This indicates to the res

by themgt 11y ago

Best explanation of how this will work is on their site: "By mining with Bitcoin XT you will produce blocks with a new version number. This indicates to the rest of the network that you support larger blocks. When 75% of the blocks are new-version blocks, a decision has been reached to start building larger blocks that will be rejected by Bitcoin Core nodes. At that point a waiting period of two weeks begins to allow news of the new consensus to spread and allow anyone who hasn't upgraded yet to do so. During this time, existing Bitcoin Core nodes will be printing a message notifying the operators about the availability of an upgraded version. If the hard fork occurs and you are still mining with Bitcoin Core, your node will reject the first new block that is larger than one megabyte in size. At that point there is a risk your newly mined coins will not be accepted at major exchanges or merchants." https://bitcoinxt.software/ https://bitcoinxt.software/ What I find intriguing about this in the bigger picture is it begins to answer one of questions from the beginning - how do political decisions regarding the blockchain get made when consensus has failed? And this shows a plausible mechanism for using a compatible fork to let users "vote with their feet". I wonder if down the road this sort of thing could evolve/devolve into a sort of real block chain politics, e.g. let users incorporate one or more non-core patches into their nodes, and once a patch reaches some majority percentage it activates and forks the chain, perhaps even with a mechanism to allow other nodes to "accept a fork" (i.e. activate the patch in their node) if it wins but otherwise not proactively "vote" for it. Interesting times.

hollerith 11y ago
>let users "vote with their feet" Let's be precise: it's the miners who are being asked to vote with their feet.
- maaku 11y ago
  Doesn't matter what miners do.
- themgt 11y ago
  Right, good point, since it'd effectively be the hashrate making decisions, not "one user one vote", which is maybe not really workable in a standard blockchain system.
- Natanael_L 11y ago
  They won't stick with changes that the majority rejects, because their mining reward would otherwise become worthless
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - hollerith 11y ago
    The Bitcoin XT software was designed to "poll" miners and ignore the other stakeholders. Mike Hearn explains why at http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010241.html http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-... Even though the other stakeholders will certainly be able to make their preferences known to the miners, any effect the other stakeholders will have on the success or failure of the fork will be through the miners, which IMHO makes my statement "it's the miners who are being asked to vote with their feet" correct, at least for a sufficiently narrow definition of "vote". Even when we consider the situation more broadly, none of the other stakeholders have (as far as I can tell) as much at stake as the miners. The miners for example might be hoping that if the 1-meg limit remains in place, transaction fees will become a significant fraction of mining rewards, which would increase the total income of mining (income being essentially the built-in rewards, which are not affected by the fork plus the transaction fees). Holders of large positions in Bitcoin on the other hand -- what is their reason for preferring one fork or the other? Ditto merchants who accept a lot of Bitcoin transactions. ADDED. As far as I can tell, the designers Bitcoin XT sofware have done what they can to minimize the distruptiveness of the fork on the lives of the other stakeholders -- by, e.g., refraining from doing anything to affect anyone but the miners till 2 weeks after a full 75% of miners (or 75% of hashing power -- not sure which) are running the XT software. ADDED. Yes, I realize that any additional income gained by the miners will be paid by Bitcoin senders (e.g., people using Bitcoin to pay for things), so in that sense Bitcoin senders have just as much at stake as the miners do, but transaction fees will always be a very small fraction of the costs (considered collectively) of the senders of Bitcoin, so this is another instance of the very common situation where a large number of people are affected in some very small way by some policy decision whereas a smaller number of people are affected in a more significant and material way, and we know (from experience with democratic governments) that what usually happens in that situation is that the smaller group (whose interests are "concentrated") has a much larger influence on the decision than the larger group (whose interests are "diffuse").
- toomim 11y ago
  If you're going to be precise, then it's not just the miners who vote, even though there is code that specifically looks at their vote. It's also the payment processors, the wallets, and everyone else who connects to the network who needs to validate the larger blocks.

by themgt 11y ago

hollerith 11y ago

>let users "vote with their feet" Let's be precise: it's the miners who are being asked to vote with their feet.

maaku 11y ago
Doesn't matter what miners do.
themgt 11y ago
Right, good point, since it'd effectively be the hashrate making decisions, not "one user one vote", which is maybe not really workable in a standard blockchain system.
Natanael_L 11y ago
They won't stick with changes that the majority rejects, because their mining reward would otherwise become worthless
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- hollerith 11y ago
  The Bitcoin XT software was designed to "poll" miners and ignore the other stakeholders. Mike Hearn explains why at http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010241.html http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-... Even though the other stakeholders will certainly be able to make their preferences known to the miners, any effect the other stakeholders will have on the success or failure of the fork will be through the miners, which IMHO makes my statement "it's the miners who are being asked to vote with their feet" correct, at least for a sufficiently narrow definition of "vote". Even when we consider the situation more broadly, none of the other stakeholders have (as far as I can tell) as much at stake as the miners. The miners for example might be hoping that if the 1-meg limit remains in place, transaction fees will become a significant fraction of mining rewards, which would increase the total income of mining (income being essentially the built-in rewards, which are not affected by the fork plus the transaction fees). Holders of large positions in Bitcoin on the other hand -- what is their reason for preferring one fork or the other? Ditto merchants who accept a lot of Bitcoin transactions. ADDED. As far as I can tell, the designers Bitcoin XT sofware have done what they can to minimize the distruptiveness of the fork on the lives of the other stakeholders -- by, e.g., refraining from doing anything to affect anyone but the miners till 2 weeks after a full 75% of miners (or 75% of hashing power -- not sure which) are running the XT software. ADDED. Yes, I realize that any additional income gained by the miners will be paid by Bitcoin senders (e.g., people using Bitcoin to pay for things), so in that sense Bitcoin senders have just as much at stake as the miners do, but transaction fees will always be a very small fraction of the costs (considered collectively) of the senders of Bitcoin, so this is another instance of the very common situation where a large number of people are affected in some very small way by some policy decision whereas a smaller number of people are affected in a more significant and material way, and we know (from experience with democratic governments) that what usually happens in that situation is that the smaller group (whose interests are "concentrated") has a much larger influence on the decision than the larger group (whose interests are "diffuse").
toomim 11y ago
If you're going to be precise, then it's not just the miners who vote, even though there is code that specifically looks at their vote. It's also the payment processors, the wallets, and everyone else who connects to the network who needs to validate the larger blocks.