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To be fair, Bitcoin technically doesn't need a true internet, just an ad-hoc mesh network. (Not that those will be easy to come by, either, but they would be so

by drcode 10y ago

To be fair, Bitcoin technically doesn't need a true internet, just an ad-hoc mesh network. (Not that those will be easy to come by, either, but they would be somewhat more feasible to establish.)

shuntress 10y ago
What would be the mechanism by which which two previously separate but each fully legitimate (in their own network) ledgers interact? Not trying to poke holes; Just curious. E: To clarify, imagine that the North American Free Peoples Conglomerate and the New China Society finally re-establish contact between the two continents for the first time in hundreds of years. They have each been running fully functional bitcoin networks for generations on their (until now) 100% separated continent-wide networks. Is there any current consideration for combining two block chains? or would this need a new custom solution to handle treating each as a completely separate currency (exchange rates)?
- vkou 10y ago
  The one burning more electricity on mining new blocks would win, and the other ledger would be invalid, after the point of divergence.
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    ... but the individual transactions on the losing chain could would still be valid and could be incorporated into the winning blockchain. It wouldn't be quite a simple as "the shortest chain loses" Oh, and the country with the lowest amount of energy spent mining would win. Both countries hashing after unification would work on the chain with the lowest difficulty, which would be the one with the least hashing power. :)
    - Atheros 10y ago
      You need to read more about how Bitcoin works.
      - LyndsySimon 10y ago
        I've been involved since early 2011. I'm quite aware of how Bitcoin works.
        maxerickson 10y ago
        The difficulty is arbitrary and set socially (mechanistically it is currently set by a formula in the software; it could be set differently if people decided to use different software...). So having a lower difficulty at time t is a terrible reason for a given miner to move to a given chain, they have to also believe that it will be the consensus chain that maximizes their value/opportunity in the future. Also, if you don't care about distributed consensus (discarding chains outside the network to make it keep working), POW mining is an expensive and inconvenient way to keep a ledger.
      - erikpukinskis 10y ago
        Apparently you're the one who needs to read up. Any valid transaction from the shorter chain could (profitably) be incorporated into the long chain. Only double spends would be invalid, which are difficult to do in a network partition.
- unabridged 10y ago
  After a hundred years each blockchain's software would already have different hard coded checkpoints. They would effectively be 2 different coins and treated that way. Ethereum has already forked on purpose and ETH and ETC are treated as two separate coins

by drcode 10y ago

To be fair, Bitcoin technically doesn't need a true internet, just an ad-hoc mesh network. (Not that those will be easy to come by, either, but they would be somewhat more feasible to establish.)

shuntress 10y ago

What would be the mechanism by which which two previously separate but each fully legitimate (in their own network) ledgers interact? Not trying to poke holes; Just curious. E: To clarify, imagine that the North American Free Peoples Conglomerate and the New China Society finally re-establish contact between the two continents for the first time in hundreds of years. They have each been running fully functional bitcoin networks for generations on their (until now) 100% separated continent-wide networks. Is there any current consideration for combining two block chains? or would this need a new custom solution to handle treating each as a completely separate currency (exchange rates)?

vkou 10y ago
The one burning more electricity on mining new blocks would win, and the other ledger would be invalid, after the point of divergence.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  ... but the individual transactions on the losing chain could would still be valid and could be incorporated into the winning blockchain. It wouldn't be quite a simple as "the shortest chain loses" Oh, and the country with the lowest amount of energy spent mining would win. Both countries hashing after unification would work on the chain with the lowest difficulty, which would be the one with the least hashing power. :)
  - Atheros 10y ago
    You need to read more about how Bitcoin works.
    - LyndsySimon 10y ago
      I've been involved since early 2011. I'm quite aware of how Bitcoin works.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        The difficulty is arbitrary and set socially (mechanistically it is currently set by a formula in the software; it could be set differently if people decided to use different software...). So having a lower difficulty at time t is a terrible reason for a given miner to move to a given chain, they have to also believe that it will be the consensus chain that maximizes their value/opportunity in the future. Also, if you don't care about distributed consensus (discarding chains outside the network to make it keep working), POW mining is an expensive and inconvenient way to keep a ledger.
    - erikpukinskis 10y ago
      Apparently you're the one who needs to read up. Any valid transaction from the shorter chain could (profitably) be incorporated into the long chain. Only double spends would be invalid, which are difficult to do in a network partition.
unabridged 10y ago
After a hundred years each blockchain's software would already have different hard coded checkpoints. They would effectively be 2 different coins and treated that way. Ethereum has already forked on purpose and ETH and ETC are treated as two separate coins