To Hard-Fork or Not to Hard-Fork? That is the Question

michaelmatthews (54)in #beyondbitcoin • 8 years ago (edited)

We've all heard about the recent Ethereum "hard-fork" disaster. But, did you know Bitcoin also had an emergency hard-fork in its 2nd year of operation? Way back in 2010, Bitcoin core developers were able to quickly design and implement a successful hard-fork of the network without any problems.

Hard-Fork to the Rescue

On August 6, 2010, a major vulnerability in the bitcoin protocol was spotted. Transactions weren't properly verified before they were included in the transaction log or "blockchain", which let users bypass bitcoin's economic restrictions and create an indefinite number of bitcoins.

On August 15, 2010, the vulnerability was exploited. Over 184 billion bitcoins were generated in a transaction and sent to two addresses on the network. Within hours, the transaction was spotted and erased from the transaction log. After the bug was fixed, the entire network was forked to a newer updated version of the bitcoin protocol.

That was the only major security flaw found and exploited in Bitcoin's long 7-year history!! Amazing!!

Bitcoin is a Work in Progress

Satoshi Nakamoto left Bitcoin unfinished. He anticipated the need for hard-forks when adding new features like "Smart Contracts" to the protocol. What happens if we get another 10-fold move in the price of Bitcoin? Could a 10-fold move in the price bring a 10-fold move in the number of transactions? What happens to Bitcoin if the blocks become full all the time? Is now the time to implement the next hard-fork to allow for a larger block size, before the next big 10-fold surge in popularity?

To Hard-Fork or Not to Hard-Fork? That is the Question

Hard-Fork to the Rescue

Bitcoin is a Work in Progress

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