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Replying to Avatar Guy Swann

Some Bitcoin History...

On this day in 2013, an undiscovered discrepancy between the Bitcoin 0.7 and recently released 0.8 client versions caused an unintentional hard fork (a network split).

After a storm of discussion and organizing by developers, the community, services, and miners, a consensus on downgrading nodes to 0.7 was reached and over nearly 6 hours the dominant hash power migrated back to the 0.7 chain.

After reaching a peak of 8 blocks ahead of the other chain, the forked chain finally fell behind the 0.7 version and 24 blocks were orphaned at once from the forked chain, marking when all of the software across the entire Bitcoin ecosystem fell back into consensus.

What I'm doing today:

• I'm taking at least 24 minutes out of the day to review some bitcoin code, and/or learn at least one new thing about Bitcoin code and how it works. The more eyes and expertise we have in the ecosystem, the stronger and more resilient Bitcoin is.

Wild to have lived through this little part of Bitcoins life.

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2140 AD 9mo ago 💬 2

Is a hard fork going to be needed for the quantum-proof encryption upgrade?

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Guy Swann 9mo ago

Not necessarily. Could be done purely through signature change, which thanks to Segwit can be done via soft fork.

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2140 AD 9mo ago

Let's hope this soft fork comes faster than the north koreans

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