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> It's not tautological to say that you get 100% or 0%. I was referring to your argument that "popularity contests don't think much of unpopular (i.e. minority

> It's not tautological to say that you get 100% or 0%. I was referring to your argument that "popularity contests don't think much of unpopular (i.e. minority) forks". > The thing called 'ethereum' at the time has always been the winner. The thing called 'Ethereum' at the time is now called ETC, and it lost. > every single update is a fork, and every single time two blocks are mined at the same time it's a fork. Only updates which change consensus are considered forks. Two blocks mined at the same time is not a fork (because consensus rules have not been changed), but a temporary chain split. Forks can sometimes cause permanent splits though (ETH, Bitcoin alts) when both sides retain hashrate to mine/support it.

Dylan16807 6y ago
> I was referring to your argument that "popularity contests don't think much of unpopular (i.e. minority) forks". So am I, but you're interpreting my words wrong. I wasn't saying that "in the realm of blockchain forking, the less popular one will be less popular", which would be a tautology. I was saying that "in the realm of blockchain forking, the less popular one will get demolished". > The thing called 'Ethereum' at the time is now called ETC, and it lost. Right before the fork, they were both called Ethereum. Right after the fork, ETH was called Ethereum. And it won. "at the time" and "the day after" are supposed to be roughly synonyms in my comment there. And you didn't address the issue of how validation logic has changed many other times on coins, with the original continuing to mine for a while before sputtering out and dying. Is "Bitcoin" dead? Nobody is running the original logic anymore.
- frankenst1 6y ago
  > I was saying that "in the realm of blockchain forking, the less popular one will get demolished". Sorry I still find myself reading your words the same way. If you can only determine if a fork was "demolished" by rating its popularity (i.e. market value or hashrate), you are back to the tautology: "The most popular fork wins" seems to be your argument. But "winning" here means having higher market cap/more hashrate. And being more popular also means having higher market cap/more hashrate. Let's say a fresh fork happens causing a chain split. Both chains have 50% market cap and hashrate. How do you measure "popularity" at this point so that your prediction of "the most popular fork wins" is actually helpful? ETH forking away from ETC was a very controversial topic at the time. > And you didn't address the issue of how validation logic has changed many other times on coins, with the original continuing to mine for a while before sputtering out and dying. This is exactly what we are discussing with ETC. ETH changed consensus and the original (ETC) continues to mine for a while before sputtering out (it is not dead... yet). > Is "Bitcoin" dead? Nobody is running the original logic anymore. Not sure what this is supposed to support? There are still Bitcoin Qt 0.8.x nodes on the network which are ~10 years old.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > Let's say a fresh fork happens causing a chain split. Both chains have 50% market cap and hashrate. How do you measure "popularity" at this point so that your prediction of "the most popular fork wins" is actually helpful? ETH forking away from ETC was a very controversial topic at the time. You have to go forward into the future to evaluate the claim. The claim is that if you look at things... let's say 5 years later, one of those is going to be dead. If you find that one of the forks still has, for example, 20% as much hash power as the other, you have disproved the claim. So it's not a tautology. Another way to formulate that part of the claim would be to say something like "the half-life of a fork is only X amount of time, so it's a very bad idea to try to pull one off". > There are still Bitcoin Qt 0.8.x nodes on the network which are ~10 years old. There's no way they're fully compatible. At the very least, consider that block that generated 184 billion bitcoins and had to immediately get the code changed. And look at all of these: https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoins-consensus-forks/ https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoins-consensus-forks/
    - frankenst1 6y ago
      > The claim is that [...] one of those [forks] is going to be dead. This is much weaker claim than your original one (~"the market values popularity over technical features") and a much less controversial one. > something like "the half-life of a fork is only X amount of time, so it's a very bad idea to try to pull one off". > If you find that one of the forks still has, for example, 20% as much hash power as the other, you have disproved the claim. Again, ETH was forked off the original Ethereum chain and won (it has ~98% hashrate) so it is not necessarily a bad idea to attempt one. > There's no way [~10 year old Bitcoin 0.8.x nodes] are fully compatible. You can download v0.8.1 here (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/releases/tag/v0.8.1 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/releases/tag/v0.8.1) and it should be able to fully sync the Bitcoin blockchain (i.e. including blocks mined today). If you use older clients for mining you might generate blocks that are ignored by other miners but your old client will still keep in sync and follow the same correct chain. (Something that is not true for ETH or Bitcoin forks). According to your link you can apparently sync even older clients (e.g. v0.3.24) if you take care of non-consensus related bug fixes that would otherwise crash your client.

Dylan16807 6y ago

> I was referring to your argument that "popularity contests don't think much of unpopular (i.e. minority) forks". So am I, but you're interpreting my words wrong. I wasn't saying that "in the realm of blockchain forking, the less popular one will be less popular", which would be a tautology. I was saying that "in the realm of blockchain forking, the less popular one will get demolished". > The thing called 'Ethereum' at the time is now called ETC, and it lost. Right before the fork, they were both called Ethereum. Right after the fork, ETH was called Ethereum. And it won. "at the time" and "the day after" are supposed to be roughly synonyms in my comment there. And you didn't address the issue of how validation logic has changed many other times on coins, with the original continuing to mine for a while before sputtering out and dying. Is "Bitcoin" dead? Nobody is running the original logic anymore.

frankenst1 6y ago
> I was saying that "in the realm of blockchain forking, the less popular one will get demolished". Sorry I still find myself reading your words the same way. If you can only determine if a fork was "demolished" by rating its popularity (i.e. market value or hashrate), you are back to the tautology: "The most popular fork wins" seems to be your argument. But "winning" here means having higher market cap/more hashrate. And being more popular also means having higher market cap/more hashrate. Let's say a fresh fork happens causing a chain split. Both chains have 50% market cap and hashrate. How do you measure "popularity" at this point so that your prediction of "the most popular fork wins" is actually helpful? ETH forking away from ETC was a very controversial topic at the time. > And you didn't address the issue of how validation logic has changed many other times on coins, with the original continuing to mine for a while before sputtering out and dying. This is exactly what we are discussing with ETC. ETH changed consensus and the original (ETC) continues to mine for a while before sputtering out (it is not dead... yet). > Is "Bitcoin" dead? Nobody is running the original logic anymore. Not sure what this is supposed to support? There are still Bitcoin Qt 0.8.x nodes on the network which are ~10 years old.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > Let's say a fresh fork happens causing a chain split. Both chains have 50% market cap and hashrate. How do you measure "popularity" at this point so that your prediction of "the most popular fork wins" is actually helpful? ETH forking away from ETC was a very controversial topic at the time. You have to go forward into the future to evaluate the claim. The claim is that if you look at things... let's say 5 years later, one of those is going to be dead. If you find that one of the forks still has, for example, 20% as much hash power as the other, you have disproved the claim. So it's not a tautology. Another way to formulate that part of the claim would be to say something like "the half-life of a fork is only X amount of time, so it's a very bad idea to try to pull one off". > There are still Bitcoin Qt 0.8.x nodes on the network which are ~10 years old. There's no way they're fully compatible. At the very least, consider that block that generated 184 billion bitcoins and had to immediately get the code changed. And look at all of these: https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoins-consensus-forks/ https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoins-consensus-forks/
  - frankenst1 6y ago
    > The claim is that [...] one of those [forks] is going to be dead. This is much weaker claim than your original one (~"the market values popularity over technical features") and a much less controversial one. > something like "the half-life of a fork is only X amount of time, so it's a very bad idea to try to pull one off". > If you find that one of the forks still has, for example, 20% as much hash power as the other, you have disproved the claim. Again, ETH was forked off the original Ethereum chain and won (it has ~98% hashrate) so it is not necessarily a bad idea to attempt one. > There's no way [~10 year old Bitcoin 0.8.x nodes] are fully compatible. You can download v0.8.1 here (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/releases/tag/v0.8.1 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/releases/tag/v0.8.1) and it should be able to fully sync the Bitcoin blockchain (i.e. including blocks mined today). If you use older clients for mining you might generate blocks that are ignored by other miners but your old client will still keep in sync and follow the same correct chain. (Something that is not true for ETH or Bitcoin forks). According to your link you can apparently sync even older clients (e.g. v0.3.24) if you take care of non-consensus related bug fixes that would otherwise crash your client.