
Analyzing the 2013 Bitcoin fork: centralized decision-making saved the day - jimsojim
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/randomwalker/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/
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jerf
Decentralized decision making doesn't mean that decisions occur in some sort
of abstract, Platonic "decentralized space" in which ideas spring into being
from the ether and just sort of magically percolate into people's mind. It
means there is no central authority with the capacity to use one or another
variety of force to enforce their decisions. If a dozen people with no
enforceable authority over each other look at a problem, discuss amongst
themselves (even if there is an informal, unenforced hierarchy), come to
similar conclusions, and agree to take coordinated action with no enforcement,
it's still a decentralized decision.

There was no central authority here. Not even BTC Guild, because nobody had
the power to force them to do what they did. They did it for their own
reasons.

This is not a demonstration of how centralization saved the day; this is a
demonstration that the decentralized BitCoin network still responded rapidly
and solved a major problem, without having to fall back to some sort of
centralization.

Decentralized networks still develop structure, usually with some sort of
power law appearing. They just don't form one single central node that defines
the very network, upon which the network lives or dies, and the dominant nodes
can and often do shift and flow over time. BitCoin has been repeatedly
resilient against even very large nodes in their graph dying.

(And I say this as a repeated and continuing BitCoin skeptic, not a
cheerleader. This sort of decentralized rapid response isn't even particularly
unusual; the Internet itself faces this sort of crisis fairly routinely and
solves the problems without a single centralized authority dictating solutions
to everybody else. "Rough consensus and running code" is another similarly-
decentralized credo that has built a lot of things.)

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jnbiche
Yeah, while I agree that the 2013 fork could have resulted in significantly
more lost money than it did, I'm far from convinced that it would have proved
catastrophic for Bitcoin. For one thing, the idea that a Bitcoin fork would be
likely to endure for anything other than ideological reasons is pretty far-
fetched. There are strong incentives for miners to be on the same side of a
fork as the economic majority, and vice versa.

Now, in the case of a major ideological disagreement, as this block size
debate has (suprisingly) turned into, I could see a lasting fork happening to
the Bitcoin ecosystem. But back in 2013, there were no such major
disagreements, just a bunch of minor squabbles.

So yes, it could have been worse, but not _that_ much worse.

~~~
erikpukinskis
What damage do you think would've happened? I am honestly confused as to why
people are so afraid of a fork.

If there is a fork, it just means that people have to decide which branch they
believe in. They might even get different names. If you have coins on both
forks, you can spend both coins.

In practice, the total market cap of the two forks should approximate the
market cap of the original, which means your coins didn't lose any value. And
in practice, whichever fork has more mindshare will probably win, not because
of any technical reason, but because that's the one people are paying
attention to so that's the one that seems safer to mine on.

Heck, if there really were a long-lived fork, people could just require people
who want to spend pre-fork coins to send the coins on both forks before they
consider the bill "paid".

How bad exactly do you think it could've gotten, in the worst case scenario?
To me, the beauty of Bitcoin is that the worst case scenario just isn't that
bad.

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FireBeyond
Yes, the 'ultimate decentralized solution' relied on 'who happened to be on an
IRC channel' for forcing things the right way.

~~~
grubles
Considering the "who" was major bitcoin developers and pool operators, yes.
#bitcoin-dev currently has 462 nicks and there were probably more during 2013
due to the crazy price increase. Keep in mind that a ton of communication
happens on IRC and even bitcoin itself utilized IRC for finding other nodes to
connect to.

~~~
FireBeyond
"Major developers and pool operators".

Pool operators, kinda like banks, or exchanges? There's just a little irony
there.

~~~
madawan
Pool operators have vastly different roles (responsibilities and
authorizations) in the bitcoin system than banks do in the fiat system.

There's no irony.

