Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP draft: Hardfork bit

From: Gareth Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2015 11:17:34 +1000

>I don't understand the situation here.  Is the assumption of a group of
>miners suddenly switching (for example, they realise that they didn't
>intend to support the new rules)?

Or they're economically rational miners, and a large difficulty decrease on the original chain, without an equally large decrease in the value of original chain tokens, has made it profitable to switch?

It's dangerous to assume all miners will continue to support the side they have initially signaled. They're only invested in the chain they mine for a short time (until coinbase maturity.)

If both sides if a fork retain value you'd expect mining to redistribute itself WRT short term profitability at every difficulty adjustment, irrespective of initially signaled support for the fork.