@VeritasSapere
I still disagree and am with
@Erdogan on this point. How do you propose it to happen and this state persist?
I do not see any reason why two chains with the same genesis block and hashing algorithm can not co exist. Today there are already many altcoins that also use SHA256 as the mining algorithm, what happens is that a equilibrium forms in part because of the multi pools where these chains often have similar profitability based on the block reward, miners are essentially always chasing profit. Switching between chains attempting to maximize their profit.
Let's follow it through. We have two sides with fundamental ideological differences.
If the PoW function remains the same on each side, the Miners VERY quickly move to the longest chain.
Brian's slides 10-15. That's their Job. Any other option finds miners on the shortest chain haemorrhaging money and on the short end of a huge difficulty gap.
Miners will move to where the profit is and a equilibrium would form, essentially the amount of hashpower each pool would have would depend on the value of its block reward and relative market value. However in the case of a much smaller chain the difficulty gap would indeed be a problem, it would require some urgent action by the developers to fix that if they intend on the smaller chain surviving.
However I think in most cases the smaller chain would just die, I think the amount of divergence required in order to cause such a split needs to be very significant for it to even be successful. This is the force that ensures the chain stays as one, however if the will is strong enough that chain can be split, this is something that I think should be embraced.
If you think about it, this already happens with orphans in a way, almost everyday blocks are orphaned off and ignored by the rest of the network. In some way this is the Bitcoin blockchain giving birth to new chains which are ignored and allowed to die. One day for whatever reason someone might choose to give life to such an orphaned chain. Being a bit poetic here, but I could not resist making that point.
This state can only persist so long as it is sponsored by an irrational actors. This new state of bifurcated chains will last only as long as the irrational actors have funds.
In my example the miners are not acting irrational, it would require a very significant divergence of ideological believe to cause such an event, how great of a divergence I do not know since we have not witnessed this taking place yet and like I said before I think this is extremely unlikely to take place in the case of Classic and Unlimited forking the network over the blocksize limit. Exactly because of these forces that you mention that are instrumental in the success of such a chain fork. Considering the support that Classic already has they could hard fork the network relatively soon and I still do not think it would lead to any type of significant split.
The other scenario is more obvious. The inferior chain realises the above and has to immediately change the PoW leaving the majority of miners with a choice. Do nothing and remain on the longest chain or switch hashing algorithms (all their chips) and support the lesser chain.
I do not think this would be necessary, that there are already many other altcoins out there today I think in part also proves that such chains can co-exist.
I also think in the case of a minority fork, the minor fork would be not that much different then one of the other thousands of altcoins out there indeed
@solex @lunar.
One thought that I have always found rather amusing, which I believe I did share earlier on this thread. Is that lets say 1MBforever small chain fork of Bitcoin came onto the altcoin market. Being somewhat familiar with the altcoin space, objectively looking at such a coin I would consider it a very uninteresting and uninnovative altcoin.
