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What about the argument that the only chain that deserves to be called Bitcoin is the one that is completely backwards compatible to all the versions of softwar

What about the argument that the only chain that deserves to be called Bitcoin is the one that is completely backwards compatible to all the versions of software dating back to the genesis block?

rrecuero 9y ago
In the end, the majority would continue the established brand. For example, you can argue that Ethereum Classic is the most 'pure' implementation of Ethereum, however, Ethereum (ETH) gained much more support and kept the name. In the case of Bitcoin, it's not clear yet who it's going to keep the name at the next fork. You can see Coinbase blog post about this https://blog.coinbase.com/clarification-on-the-upcoming-segwit2x-fork-d3c0f545c3e0 https://blog.coinbase.com/clarification-on-the-upcoming-segw...
- gtrubetskoy 9y ago
  I'd take issue with Bitcoin being a brand. In my view it's a pretty well defined "thing". Brands are words that need to be trademarked, but "a cow" does not need to be, because everyone knows what a cow is, and if I sell you what I say is a cow but is actually a cat and then explain that that's now the established brand - you'd say it's cat, not a cow. The test for Bitcoin is very simple - fire up an old version of the Bitcoin software, and if it validates the blockchain, then the blockchain you have is Bitcoin. If it doesn't, it's not Bitcoin. And if/when Bitcoin Core ever changes the software such that it is a hard, backwards incompatible fork, then on that day they should stop referring to it as Bitcoin, because it is not the Bitcoin that Satoshi originally started.
  - sgspace 9y ago
    Try that today and your old node/wallet will have trouble reading Segwit transactions.
    - gtrubetskoy 9y ago
      > Try that today and your old node/wallet will have trouble reading Segwit transactions. If you mean starting an older version of Bitcoin Core after the on-disk storage has been converted by a newer version, then yes, of course. The way data is stored has changed, not the least of changes being Leveldb instead of Berkleydb. But at the network level newer nodes will communicate with older pre-Segwit nodes just fine.
thescriptkiddie 9y ago
That chain no longer exists. Bitcoin has had several hard forks in the past that broke backwards compatibility.
- kobeya 9y ago
  It has not. You have been misinformed.
  - ptrincr 9y ago
    On 16 August, 2013 block 252,451 (0x0000000000000024b58eeb1134432f00497a6a860412996e7a260f47126eed07) was accepted by the main network, forking unpatched nodes off the network. From https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawi...
    - kobeya 9y ago
      That was not a hard fork, and the recovery from it was not a hard fork. Notably there are still bitcoin nodes from before then synced to the network, although they require some care and attention to maintain. What happened was the behavior became probabilistic based on the state of the machine it was running on and the how much block history was being rewritten due to a recent reorg, etc. Usually if the node was restarted, it synced and ran just fine. The recovery didn't change the bitcoin consensus rules as seen by existing clients. There was just a temporary extra limit put in place (a soft-fork) to keep blocks small while the issue was sorted out, then lifted.
  - blusterXY 9y ago
    It has had forks which have produced blocks which: (1) would not have been produced by any previous nodes in the network, and (2) forced the updated software to ignore the original majority chain. If you check the software, you'll see explicit checkpoints at which the client is told to ignore certain blocks (identified by their hash). Breaking the ability of the network to follow a valid majority chain is breaking backward compatibility. It's disingenuous to claim otherwise simply because the forked version eventually ended up with the longest chain.
nosuchthing 9y ago
Satoshi posted about a method for upgrading block sizes back in 2010: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg153... if (blocknumber > 115000) maxblocksize = largerlimit In the original white paper, the goal is to have a consensus protocol for tamper resistant record keeping and accounting. Satoshi's proof of work using SHA-256 has now proven to be vulnerable to ASIC attacks and heavy centralized miner operations and mining pools. The arguments of semantics really miss the point of the intension to offer egalitarian access to currency production and account. Keeping the transaction rate low on purpose is counter productive by all measure, but several of the core devs work for blockstream which would stand to profit by selling their own sidechains to enterprises, counter to the first sentence of how Bitcoin is defined in the white paper. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.
Buttes 9y ago
Bitcoin is the chain with the most work.

What about the argument that the only chain that deserves to be called Bitcoin is the one that is completely backwards compatible to all the versions of software dating back to the genesis block?

rrecuero 9y ago

In the end, the majority would continue the established brand. For example, you can argue that Ethereum Classic is the most 'pure' implementation of Ethereum, however, Ethereum (ETH) gained much more support and kept the name. In the case of Bitcoin, it's not clear yet who it's going to keep the name at the next fork. You can see Coinbase blog post about this https://blog.coinbase.com/clarification-on-the-upcoming-segwit2x-fork-d3c0f545c3e0 https://blog.coinbase.com/clarification-on-the-upcoming-segw...

gtrubetskoy 9y ago
I'd take issue with Bitcoin being a brand. In my view it's a pretty well defined "thing". Brands are words that need to be trademarked, but "a cow" does not need to be, because everyone knows what a cow is, and if I sell you what I say is a cow but is actually a cat and then explain that that's now the established brand - you'd say it's cat, not a cow. The test for Bitcoin is very simple - fire up an old version of the Bitcoin software, and if it validates the blockchain, then the blockchain you have is Bitcoin. If it doesn't, it's not Bitcoin. And if/when Bitcoin Core ever changes the software such that it is a hard, backwards incompatible fork, then on that day they should stop referring to it as Bitcoin, because it is not the Bitcoin that Satoshi originally started.
- sgspace 9y ago
  Try that today and your old node/wallet will have trouble reading Segwit transactions.
  - gtrubetskoy 9y ago
    > Try that today and your old node/wallet will have trouble reading Segwit transactions. If you mean starting an older version of Bitcoin Core after the on-disk storage has been converted by a newer version, then yes, of course. The way data is stored has changed, not the least of changes being Leveldb instead of Berkleydb. But at the network level newer nodes will communicate with older pre-Segwit nodes just fine.

thescriptkiddie 9y ago

That chain no longer exists. Bitcoin has had several hard forks in the past that broke backwards compatibility.

kobeya 9y ago
It has not. You have been misinformed.
- ptrincr 9y ago
  On 16 August, 2013 block 252,451 (0x0000000000000024b58eeb1134432f00497a6a860412996e7a260f47126eed07) was accepted by the main network, forking unpatched nodes off the network. From https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawi...
  - kobeya 9y ago
    That was not a hard fork, and the recovery from it was not a hard fork. Notably there are still bitcoin nodes from before then synced to the network, although they require some care and attention to maintain. What happened was the behavior became probabilistic based on the state of the machine it was running on and the how much block history was being rewritten due to a recent reorg, etc. Usually if the node was restarted, it synced and ran just fine. The recovery didn't change the bitcoin consensus rules as seen by existing clients. There was just a temporary extra limit put in place (a soft-fork) to keep blocks small while the issue was sorted out, then lifted.
- blusterXY 9y ago
  It has had forks which have produced blocks which: (1) would not have been produced by any previous nodes in the network, and (2) forced the updated software to ignore the original majority chain. If you check the software, you'll see explicit checkpoints at which the client is told to ignore certain blocks (identified by their hash). Breaking the ability of the network to follow a valid majority chain is breaking backward compatibility. It's disingenuous to claim otherwise simply because the forked version eventually ended up with the longest chain.

nosuchthing 9y ago

Satoshi posted about a method for upgrading block sizes back in 2010: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg153... if (blocknumber > 115000) maxblocksize = largerlimit In the original white paper, the goal is to have a consensus protocol for tamper resistant record keeping and accounting. Satoshi's proof of work using SHA-256 has now proven to be vulnerable to ASIC attacks and heavy centralized miner operations and mining pools. The arguments of semantics really miss the point of the intension to offer egalitarian access to currency production and account. Keeping the transaction rate low on purpose is counter productive by all measure, but several of the core devs work for blockstream which would stand to profit by selling their own sidechains to enterprises, counter to the first sentence of how Bitcoin is defined in the white paper. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

Buttes 9y ago

Bitcoin is the chain with the most work.