I still don't get it. As long as a reasonable majority of hashing power stays on one chain, there shouldn't be any symptoms except increased confirmation times.
The bitcoin.org page says:
> Do not trust any payments you receive after Tue Aug 01 2017 02:00:00 GMT+0200 (CEST) until the situation is resolved. No matter how many confirmations the new payment says it has, it can disappear from your wallet at any point up until the situation is resolved.
Which I don't understand, unless miners are actively trying to make this happen (by mining on two different chains with roughly the same hashing power). According to the paper[1], as long as at least 20% of the hashing power is honest, 11 confirmations should be final (in 99.9% of cases)
No, that's not correct. In the case of the UASF, something very frightening is possible.
If the UASF has majority economic support (unlikely) and also the miners do not support it, initially the UASF side will be behind, and there will be multiple chains. There will be the UASF chain and the normal chain.
But since the UASF has more support, it'll have more block reward, and eventually it'll have more hashrate behind it. It'll eventually catch up to the other chain, pass the other chain, and then...
The other chain completely implodes, and stops existing. Yes, that's actually what happens, and why if you are a miner, you should be afraid of the UASF. You lose basically everything if the UASF ends up with more hashrate, and the UASF is eventually guaranteed to have more hashrate if it has a higher coin price.
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Basically, your doomsday scenario dramatically understates the worst-case scenario.
>The other chain completely implodes, and stops existing.
Are you sure? If I'm not wrong, this isn't that much different from Ethereum/Ethereum Classic situation.
Ethereum Classic's price is no where near Ethereum's but it is still maintaining a good position - 5th by Market Cap and 3rd by 24hr volume.
You are saying the ALL of the mining power will eventually move over, but what if it doesn't the miners (85% of whom support Segwit2x) stay on the non-UASF fork?
UASF Bitcoin will be very weak, so I can't expect what would happen, but I'm just saying its not so simple.
> Ethereum Classic's price is no where near Ethereum's but it is still maintaining a good position - 5th by Market Cap and 3rd by 24hr volume.
ETC's price is being pumped up (some more context can be found on /r/ethereum), in some cases by taking advantage of newcomers looking to get into the ETH craze, helped by the fact that the Ethereum Foundation doesn't seem interested in maintaining ownership how the word "Ethereum" is used. There's no real technological innovation or developer interest in ETC.
I didn't really find any proper reason as to how it is being pumped. Just about ETC misleading people into buying it. Any links?
>There's no real technological innovation or developer interest in ETC.
I mean, ETC guys can just push all of the new developments in ETH to their code. The codebase is the same. There probably won't be any original developments in ETC, but they don't really need much to stay on par with ETH.
Not saying ETH is perfect, far from it, but ETC is a pumped up scam for sure. They're using "Ethereum" in the name to fool newbies, likely propping up the price at current levels. I seriously doubt anyone know is knowledgable/not in on the scam really invests in a coin that is identical to ETH but none of the leadership, community or dev interest.
Let me get this out of the way: While I admire the contributions by the Ethereum Foundation and wish them all the best, I think the hard fork shouldn't have been done. I think letting the money get away would show that they actually mean the 'code is law' statement that was thrown around (Note that I have till date never owned ETH or ETC and probably won't in the near future)
Now that that's out the way, let me say the cognitive dissonance in that post is palpable. Words are conveniently placed so spin the situation into something else.
r/Bitcoin is shown to be the culprit here, just because they are the ones with the most subs and poking fun at ETH. The reality was every other altcoin community was doing the exact same thing. I was watching everything closely when as it unfolded. I can link you posts from other subreddits if you want.
>The Ethereum community stuck together, worked together, and fought back. Successfully
This is false. Quite a few of the ETH community fought for not forking. No one wants to lose money, so who wouldn't want to fork. Many vocal people invested quite a bit of their funds so it is completely understandable.
The irony here is, even the 'rogue hackers' were probably part of the ETH community. Who else would know the codebase so well? The phrase 'stuck together' is false.
>Barry Silberts co-owned exchange "Poloniex" raced to be the first exchange to start trading the coin of this old chain (ETC)
Looks like something a smart person would do. I would also capitalize on trades that people will make with ETC. You've immediately got twice the volume therefore double the fees that can be collected. This is clearly a good business decision. Doing that before other exchanges means more fees collected!
>ETC is an Attack against Ethereum
That's a bold claim. I don't see any 'attack'. Any person with half a brain can see which one is the original ETH. It is a fork, so calling it an attack is dramatic.
>It's a technological attack, and a monetary scam
Big words. I don't see any technology being used to attack ETH. Just people mining the coin they support.
>If you have bought, or holding, or still planning to buy ETC, be ready to get hit by some nasty surprises down the road ( on those days - and I can already foresee a few - I will be linking everyone back to this thread right here, as a reminder).
Now who sounds like they are spreading FUD?
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While Poloniex was made out to be the perpetrator, it has only 5% of the 24hr transaction volume. So pointing fingers at the Poloniex person was baseless and foolish.
I believe in a bright future for ETH and will probably get into it, but falsifying events is a great way to show others that the community can't self-police and is an echo chamber.
Yes I'm sure, this is an expert opinion. Ethereum and Etherum Classic follow separate, incompatible rules. If Etherurm Classic were ever to pass Ethereum in value, nothing dramatic would happen.
If we end up with Bitcoin and BitcoinSW, and BSW is the minority (like Etherum Classic), we'd have a situation like today. Except, if BSW were to ever catch up to Bitcoin in total work, when it passed Bitcoin (51% hashrate is enough to cause this), it would obliterate the original chain, and become the only chain.
This property is why we gave it a new name (UASF).
It doesn't actually delete the other chain, in all Wipeout scenarios, despite what everyone is saying
Nodes can continue to follow it if they feel like it, and change their code.
There is nothing that stops someone from saying "yes, this chain has less proof of work, but I don't care".
You could argue that this would cause the old chain the be less valuable, but the old chain doesn't literally get deleted from people's hard drives in all scenarios.
The Wipeout scenario is overhyped, because of how nodes can choose to follow the old chain if they feel like it.
IE, old nodes would effectively be soft forking by adding a check point onto the old chain.
The bitcoin.org page says:
> Do not trust any payments you receive after Tue Aug 01 2017 02:00:00 GMT+0200 (CEST) until the situation is resolved. No matter how many confirmations the new payment says it has, it can disappear from your wallet at any point up until the situation is resolved.
Which I don't understand, unless miners are actively trying to make this happen (by mining on two different chains with roughly the same hashing power). According to the paper[1], as long as at least 20% of the hashing power is honest, 11 confirmations should be final (in 99.9% of cases)
[1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf (page 8)