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> guarantees that the ETH blockchain will be longer than the ETC blockchain. Chain length is number of blocks, which is controlled by miners, not "laity". I t

> guarantees that the ETH blockchain will be longer than the ETC blockchain. Chain length is number of blocks, which is controlled by miners, not "laity". I think your system might prevent double spends; unfortunately it would do so by rendering the network unusable for any new users, who wouldn't have a way to know which is the good network to join. I suppose a central authority could be used to identify the good chain, but most coins prefer not to have one of those. The advantage of the simple chain length rule is that it is simple, requires no central authority, is self-correcting and the only weakness is a 51% attack.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
> Chain length is number of blocks, which is controlled by miners, not "laity". A block is a set of transactions, transfers of currency from one address to another address. Miners don't just add blocks because they're bored. They add blocks when someone submits a transaction. So the number of transactions that occur is closely related to the number of blocks in the chain.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  This is very wrong. Of course miners are always adding blocks, even when the blocks are empty; they do so because there is a block reward. Even empty blocks, when mined by honest miners, are serving a purpose, because they are increasing the cost of a 51% attack. Look through the histories of many different blockchains and you'll see empty (or nearly empty) blocks that exist for a variety of reasons. Also, transaction sizes differ drastically depending on what a transaction does, and blocks max out at a given size, not a given number of transactions. So when blocks are full (which they aren't most of the time except for the very highest used cryptocurrencies) the number of transactions per block still varies quite a bit.
CydeWeys 8y ago
It's worth pointing out that it's not chain length which ultimately wins out, but chain weight, which is the sum of the difficulties of each block on a given chain. This is an important distinction, because by fudging timestamps you can generate a valid chain of arbitrarily long length where each block has very low difficulty, but said chain would still not be preferred over a chain with fewer blocks of much higher difficulties (i.e. the real chain).

thaumasiotes 8y ago

> Chain length is number of blocks, which is controlled by miners, not "laity". A block is a set of transactions, transfers of currency from one address to another address. Miners don't just add blocks because they're bored. They add blocks when someone submits a transaction. So the number of transactions that occur is closely related to the number of blocks in the chain.

CydeWeys 8y ago
This is very wrong. Of course miners are always adding blocks, even when the blocks are empty; they do so because there is a block reward. Even empty blocks, when mined by honest miners, are serving a purpose, because they are increasing the cost of a 51% attack. Look through the histories of many different blockchains and you'll see empty (or nearly empty) blocks that exist for a variety of reasons. Also, transaction sizes differ drastically depending on what a transaction does, and blocks max out at a given size, not a given number of transactions. So when blocks are full (which they aren't most of the time except for the very highest used cryptocurrencies) the number of transactions per block still varies quite a bit.

CydeWeys 8y ago

It's worth pointing out that it's not chain length which ultimately wins out, but chain weight, which is the sum of the difficulties of each block on a given chain. This is an important distinction, because by fudging timestamps you can generate a valid chain of arbitrarily long length where each block has very low difficulty, but said chain would still not be preferred over a chain with fewer blocks of much higher difficulties (i.e. the real chain).