Problem:
P1. Miners may be reluctant to support BU, because in event of a failure of Core-incompatible fork they may lose significant amounts.
P2. Even if BU hashpower attains big majority, it's possible Core manages to prevail via social means; in particular, if most exchanges stay on the core chain, eventual BU fork may fail, with miners gradually returning to mining Core.
P3. Opposing early adopters may try to economically destroy BU fork by dumping big amounts and simultaneously buying CoreBTC for the proceeds, significantly decreasing price in the short-term and potentially causing miners to switch to the Core chain.
P4. It's likely there are many node owners and economic agents who don't care either way - they won't change their nodes unless they have to.
P5. Transaction replay attacks.
In short, the system has a powerful inertia that, in my opinion, requires extraordinary solutions to beat.
Solution:
As a temporary measure, once total BU hashpower grows beyond a reasonable threshold (eg. at least 12 BU blocks in the last 18 AND >=70% over last 1008), all these issues can be mitigated by merged mining - mining blocks that are compatible with Core nodes and miners, but economically useless for them.
S1. Include only two transactions in the Core block - coinbase, and a special transaction containing the hash of a true BU block.
S2. Non-BU blocks are to be orphaned by BU miners.
S3. BU and BU-compatible nodes receive full true BU block in addition to Core's legacy block, with normal transactions.
After some longer period, say, 4320 blocks (30 days) of merged mining, start mining normal BU-blocks only, ie. without empty Core block.
S1 fixes P1, because in the event that BU fork fails (ie. there's not enough hashpower to orphan core blocks), miners lose only transaction fees + few blocks at most, significantly decreasing cost of failure. This should make miners much more likely to support BU, in turn increasing probability of success.
S2 fixes other points - with no transactions for a month, CoreCoins turn out to be completely useless, which causes everyone to switch, fast. Because non-BU blocks are orphaned, there's only one chain available, so it's not possible to selectively dump coins on the BU chain, nor is a transaction replay attack possible.
P.S. Given how definitive this solution is, I would suggest a small blocksize increase from the start - perhaps 4MB. This would allow switching users to immediately notice the improvements, likely generating big amounts of enthusiasm and renewed hope, even in current supporters of small blocks. Without immediate benefit, negative feelings, especially resentment, are likely to gain traction among them, diving the community.
P1. Miners may be reluctant to support BU, because in event of a failure of Core-incompatible fork they may lose significant amounts.
P2. Even if BU hashpower attains big majority, it's possible Core manages to prevail via social means; in particular, if most exchanges stay on the core chain, eventual BU fork may fail, with miners gradually returning to mining Core.
P3. Opposing early adopters may try to economically destroy BU fork by dumping big amounts and simultaneously buying CoreBTC for the proceeds, significantly decreasing price in the short-term and potentially causing miners to switch to the Core chain.
P4. It's likely there are many node owners and economic agents who don't care either way - they won't change their nodes unless they have to.
P5. Transaction replay attacks.
In short, the system has a powerful inertia that, in my opinion, requires extraordinary solutions to beat.
Solution:
As a temporary measure, once total BU hashpower grows beyond a reasonable threshold (eg. at least 12 BU blocks in the last 18 AND >=70% over last 1008), all these issues can be mitigated by merged mining - mining blocks that are compatible with Core nodes and miners, but economically useless for them.
S1. Include only two transactions in the Core block - coinbase, and a special transaction containing the hash of a true BU block.
S2. Non-BU blocks are to be orphaned by BU miners.
S3. BU and BU-compatible nodes receive full true BU block in addition to Core's legacy block, with normal transactions.
After some longer period, say, 4320 blocks (30 days) of merged mining, start mining normal BU-blocks only, ie. without empty Core block.
S1 fixes P1, because in the event that BU fork fails (ie. there's not enough hashpower to orphan core blocks), miners lose only transaction fees + few blocks at most, significantly decreasing cost of failure. This should make miners much more likely to support BU, in turn increasing probability of success.
S2 fixes other points - with no transactions for a month, CoreCoins turn out to be completely useless, which causes everyone to switch, fast. Because non-BU blocks are orphaned, there's only one chain available, so it's not possible to selectively dump coins on the BU chain, nor is a transaction replay attack possible.
P.S. Given how definitive this solution is, I would suggest a small blocksize increase from the start - perhaps 4MB. This would allow switching users to immediately notice the improvements, likely generating big amounts of enthusiasm and renewed hope, even in current supporters of small blocks. Without immediate benefit, negative feelings, especially resentment, are likely to gain traction among them, diving the community.
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