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In that scenario there would likely be a fork of the software to do something like lower the hash power requirements and continue using the network.
by TwoFactor 9y ago
In that scenario there would likely be a fork of the software to do something like lower the hash power requirements and continue using the network.
- erentz 9y agoIf all the miners go away the difficulty requirement will drop on its own to maintain the 10min block rate. No need to fork anything: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty
- teraflop 9y agoAs I commented in another thread: the difficulty adjustments happen periodically after a certain number of blocks, not after any given period of time. If the hash rate decreases, the adjustment slows down along with everything else. A 5%/day sustained drop is enough to halt transaction processing entirely. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16161326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16161326
- erentz 9y agoInteresting weakness! I hadn't considered that. (Potentially also an interesting attack vector for states wanting to shut it down?) It would indeed force the community to change the difficulty algo to work around it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]