
Bitcoin Unlimited Miners May Be Preparing a 51% Attack - prostoalex
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-unlimited-miners-may-be-preparing-51-attack-bitcoin/?_ke=bW9za2FseXVrQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ%3D%3D
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6nf
This is not an attack, this is just the miners working out a way to increase
transaction throughput on the block chain. Maybe they will go with the Bitcoin
Unlimited plan or maybe they will end up going in a different direction. We'll
have to wait and see. They're not doing this to attack Bitcoin, that's
ridiculous. They've spent millions of dollars investing in mining equipment
and they will do everything in their power to keep the price of bitcoin high.
Calling this an attack is just pure nonsense.

~~~
Dylan16807
Nobody is calling Bitcoin Unlimited itself an attack. It's the measures they
might take to prevent a fork that would be an attack. An attack on the fork.

~~~
6nf
Bitcoin Unlimited IS a fork, why would they try to prevent a fork? I don't
understand what you're saying.

~~~
Dylan16807
The entire basis of the article is wanting it to _not_ be a fork. If they have
a majority of miners, they are in theory able to set the rules for actual
bitcoin.

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Kinnard
This is old [divisive] news on a rapidly developing situation. Several
mediating proposals have been put forward in the time since this was
published:

[http://moneyandstate.com/thoughts-on-
segwit2mb/](http://moneyandstate.com/thoughts-on-segwit2mb/)

[https://thecontrol.co/a-bitcoin-
compromise-45cd92739387](https://thecontrol.co/a-bitcoin-
compromise-45cd92739387)

[http://www.coindesk.com/purse-proposal-touts-extension-
block...](http://www.coindesk.com/purse-proposal-touts-extension-blocks-
bitcoin-scaling-solution/)

EDIT: And the title is click-baity.

------
markkat
It's not an attack if the majority of miners decide to use a specific
implementation. That's how bitcoin works.

~~~
Dylan16807
Most of the time it's unanimously agreed to follow the majority of minors.
Everything runs smoothly.

When that's not agreed, preventing a fork requires some way of blocking the
non-majority miners. That is an attack, and not just 'how bitcoin works'.
Bitcoin has no builtin way of handling such disputes.

~~~
6nf
Why would it not be agreed to follow the majority of the miners? That's
literally the whole basis of the blockchain. The chain with the most work
wins. If you don't like it then you can make your own fork, nobody is going to
care or try to stop you.

~~~
Dylan16807
Because the different chains are abiding by different rules. Software A sees
both chains as valid, while software B only sees the shorter chain as valid.
The result is a conflict that cannot be easily resolved.

It's a human consensus problem. (And don't say that only the original version
of the bitcoin rules are valid, or that would mean that bitcoin actually
disintegrated years ago.)

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dchuk
As with most things Bitcoin: can someone please help explain this to me like
I'm 5? I've read numerous articles, even a whole book, on Bitcoin, and I still
struggle to wrangle all of the vocabulary and terms necessary to read through
an article like this.

Is this a new Bitcoin about to form? Same thing? Are existing bitcoins in
"danger"? I struggle to even think of valid questions for some of these
topics, you'd think by now there'd have been an effort to make this stuff more
easily digestible to common folk (and I'm a technical guy! this just whooshes
right past me).

~~~
nickthemagicman
Think of a git repo with all of the miners maintaining the master branch. If
suddenly a majority of miners wants to create a new branch and they are over
51% of the miners, the new branch becomes the master branch.

Both branches still work. All coins before the fork apply to both branches,
however, after the fork,both branches are different, any new coins purchased
apply to only one branch.

It's essentially two coins at that point. Then essentially it's up to the
payment processers like coinbase to decide which one to support.

~~~
Kinnard
That doesn't explain what the divide is about(How to scale Bitcoin now that it
has become so much more popular) and doesn't touch on the fact that as Bitcoin
is still achieving internality, and most users don't hold their own Bitcoin
the exchanges/wallets and the interface fiat-liquidity they provide matter A
LOT and these parties largely support seg-wit which arguably gives them more
power.

~~~
6nf
Segwit is still compatible with increasing the block size a la Bitcoin
Unlimited. They are not being forced to give up segwit here. It's really two
separate conversations. Supporting segwit doesn't mean automatically opposing
BU.

~~~
Kinnard
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14047294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14047294)

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out_of_protocol
Current situation in numbers (see
[https://coin.dance/blocks](https://coin.dance/blocks)):

* Bitcoin Unlimited (and compatible implementations): Raises protocol maximum from 1MB up to 32MB blocks. No hard-defined activation threshold, miners decided to use 75%. Current progress: ~38%

* SegWit: Raises protocol maximum via extension blocks up to ~2MB. Activation threshold: 95%. Current progress: ~32%

* Currently active chain. 1MB blocks. ~30% mined blocks to keep things as they are (don't care etc).

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giomasce
I wonder how can anyone expect Bitcoin to become popular, if things keep being
that unstable...

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imjustsaying
6 day old news, already caused a dip in prices, but was rebounded by the next
day. Trying to hit the price again by posting this on HN?

~~~
imjustsaying
Downvoting without comment is like making a claim without evidence.

