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China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close

bbc.co.uk

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Re: China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting that every miner chooses how they mine. Someone with 51% hash power can decide to always mine on top of their previous block, ignoring what everyone else does. And because the 51% chain is longer, the 49% chain get discarded by any miner following default bitcoin rules. So the effective block rate gets slowed down, and the person with 51% of the power has control of 100% of the canonical blocks.

This would make the 51% miners' chain grow at half the speed as the 49% miners' chain, because the 49% are building on both their blocks and the other miners' blocks, whereas the 51% are only building on their blocks. This, of course, is assuming that the 51% doesn't create blocks considered invalid on the other chain. This would cause a hard fork and it's exactly what is happening now with Bitcoin Cash, except with…

> the 49% are building on both their blocks and the other miners' blocks, whereas the 51% are only building on their blocks.

They are building on some of their blocks and some of the other miner's blocks. This doesn't make them faster.

Whenever a 49%er mines a block, there is a temporary fork. The 49% and the 51% start mining on two completely separate branches, both of which progress at half speed. Eventually the 51% branch is longer, and the 49% discard their previous work and switch to it. So the 49% were using their blocks, and now they are using the 51% blocks, but never both at the same time.

The canonical blockchain does not progress at full speed. Half the blocks that get mined eventually become orphans.

It would be impossible for the 49% to build on everyone's blocks, because the 51%-created blocks are always mutually incompatible preexisting 49%-created blocks.

> This, of course, is assuming that the 51% doesn't create blocks considered invalid on the other chain.

Yes, of course.

Re: China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make the 51% miners' chain grow at half the speed as the 49% miners' chain, because the 49% are building on both their blocks and the other miners' blocks, whereas the 51% are only building on their blocks. This, of course, is assuming that the 51% doesn't create blocks considered invalid on the other chain. This would cause a hard fork and it's exactly what is happening now with Bitcoin Cash, except with…

> the 49% are building on both their blocks and the other miners' blocks, whereas the 51% are only building on their blocks. They are building on some of their blocks and some of the other miner's blocks. This doesn't make them faster. Whenever a 49%er mines a block, there is a temporary fork. The 49% and the 51% start mining on two completely separate branches, both of which progress at half speed. Eventually the 51…

If this were so then Bitcoin Cash would have been dead from the start. They hard forked with much less than 49% of hashpower.

There are really two separate scenarios we're talking about here. Miner activated hard forks, which are a real thing that have happened (though not exactly like you describe), and a hypothetical situation where a group of miners agree to create an exclusive chain that is also backwards compatible. I'm no expert but I don't think that would have the intended result.

Re: China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the 49% are building on both their blocks and the other miners' blocks, whereas the 51% are only building on their blocks. They are building on some of their blocks and some of the other miner's blocks. This doesn't make them faster. Whenever a 49%er mines a block, there is a temporary fork. The 49% and the 51% start mining on two completely separate branches, both of which progress at half speed. Eventually the 51…

If this were so then Bitcoin Cash would have been dead from the start. They hard forked with much less than 49% of hashpower. There are really two separate scenarios we're talking about here. Miner activated hard forks, which are a real thing that have happened (though not exactly like you describe), and a hypothetical situation where a group of miners agree to create an exclusive chain that is also backwards compati…

If bitcoin cash was making blocks that were exactly compatible with bitcoin blocks, in both directions, then yes it would be dead immediately.

That's the difference between a hard fork and a 51% attack. In a 51% attack you keep making normal bitcoin blocks, just the ones you want.

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