Saturday, November 3, 2018

Satoshi whitepaper's "longest chain is Bitcoin" rule does not apply when comparing two chains with different consensus rules.

I have heard countless arguments that if SV ever gained 75% hashrate and forks, then it must be called BCH because it is the longest chain according to Satoshi's whitepaper.

This statement is absolutely false. The whitepaper only used the longest chain rule to help determine which chain is Bitcoin in the event the Bitcoin network is being attacked. Because there will be more honest nodes mining, the longest chain wins. The longest chain is only used to determine winner of 2 chains using the same consensus rules.

When 2 chains are following different consensus rules, longest chain does not matter at all.

See for example the ETH/ETC hardfork. Different consensus rules. No one cares which chain is longest (i.e. more work). Users decide which they want to call Ethereum.

If there will be a contentious hardfork with SV nodes forking to a 128MB chain, it doesn't matter if that chain has 75% of the miners on it. 2 different consensus rules means 2 different coins. And users will decide which coin they will call Bitcoin. Hashrate and miners don't decide that for the users.

Here's an analogy. What happens when chess game makers decide to come together to change the chess board from an 8x8 to a 9x9 board because they think having more space to play chess is better? Would users just accept that and call the new game chess? No, they won't refer to the new game (with new rules) as chess. They will still refer to the original game (on an 8x8 board with the original rules) as chess.

That said, it is possible that users will decide that the SV fork is the true BCH. But it will be because they choose to call that the real BCH, and not because a majority hashrate demands it to be called Bitcoin.


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