What stops anyone from forking the Bitcoin software?
🤔
Discussion
Nothing stops anyone. But it’s stupid to do so, really there’s no upside to it. It also means you’re either dishonest or extremely confused about the uses of Bitcoin.
There's no upside to it... yet.
This could change, depending upon future sw releases, extreme price manipulation, rent-seeking through heavy concentration, etc.
If they stick to backwards compatibility, it won’t happen.
If some devs break backwards compatibility, and convince some miners to follow them, it’ll be them forking Bitcoin, not me.
And there’s no upside to do so. Look at all the previous forks.
This is technically true, that they would be the ones forking, but it's also true that you could end up on the smaller branch.
Also technically true. But miners aren’t gonna switch to a new fork willy nilly. They’ve invested huge amounts of money and energy in Bitcoin.
Why would they waste that away for an “exciting new fork” ?
It’s like cutting the tree branch you’re sitting on.
You are asking me if a large group of intelligent people would ever do something colossally stupid.
They hardly do anything else.
It’s not a group. Each of them deciding individually. If a miner wants to a back a fork with a shit ton of KWh, then they’re free to do it. But since they’re producing that energy themselves, they know it doesn’t grow on trees, and they’ll count to 10 before spending it on the newest fork.
Up to each miner to do economic calculations for the upside of supporting a fork. And looking at all precedents, there isn’t any.
Miners are increasingly organizing and outsourcing. As the cost of mining increases, economies of scale, political influence, and geographical placement become more important, which is leading to centralization.
Validation is still a thing. If they break backwards compatibility with the rest of us, they’ll be on their own.
đź‘Źđź‘Źđź‘Źđź‘Źclassic and spot on
Previous forks all tried to change the functionality, as far as I know.
True, and they all failed.
My point.
(Devil's Advocate here, but #monero is very much alive and has "real economy" adoption to rival bitcoin. Just not in things that can have main street shop fronts. It sucks as a SoV, though, because inflation-by-design.)
Money is a *brand* first and foremost. You want the brand most people recognize. The Yen, Euro, Aussie all have brands and have plenty of adoption. The dollar is a brand that is the largest, so everyone wants dollars.
Bitcoin is THE brand.
Truth
Yes, that's my argument. You can burn a brand.
True, but there’s no benefit to burn an established brand and start a whole new one from scratch.
It is technically possible, but I can’t imagine anyone would do this.
If you don't change the functionality, then you just create a new client which is compatible with the existing network, like Bitcoin Knots for example.