menu
search

Podcasts: SOB #479 Ethereum, Bitcoin; Hard Fork, Soft Fork: How Decentralized Change Is Made 🔗 3 years ago

Speaking of Bitcoin (formerly Let's Talk Bitcoin!)

Ethereum’s London hard fork, also known as EIP 1559, took place on Aug. 5. The backwards-incompatible upgrade reignited community debate over hard forks, soft forks and the best methods – most foolproof, least polarizing – to bring about change to a network.

Join hosts Adam B. Levine, Jonathan Mohan and Andreas M. Antonopoulos as they explore the various ways in which consensus has been reached recently across the two largest protocols. The differences in technology and underlying philosophy means some solutions are more enticing to Ethereum and others to Bitcoin.

Ethereum maintains a so-called “difficulty bomb,” whose fuse is lengthened with every upgrade. If it ever goes off, miners would face exponentially harder work and proportionally diminished rewards, forcing them to switch from the pre-fork chain to the upgraded one. Bitcoin’s equivalent to the difficulty bomb, the User Activated Soft Fork (UASF), accomplishes the same thing by other means. Are these mechanisms the proverbial ‘Chekhov’s Gun,’ inevitably to be used in some later act, or simply empty threats to coerce miners into compliance?

Listen to this episode of “Speaking of Bitcoin” for an in-depth explainer of how wide-spread change occurs across decentralized networks and what changes might be in store for the future.

-

This episode featured Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Jonathan Mohan. It was edited by Jonas, our theme song comes courtesy of Jared Rubens and todays music during the break was Sloth Beats by Gurty Beats. Today's album art features a photo by Anita Jankovic/Unsplash, modified by Speaking of Bitcoin.

Have any questions or comments? Send Adam an email at adam@speakingofbitcoin.show

---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/originalltb/message

More from this author

2 years agoA Final Discussion

20th August 2022 12:00

2 years agoUpdate 6/19/2022

19th June 2022 02:45

6th May 2022 01:40

13th February 2022 06:37

Feel free to send a tip using tippin.me

Or alternatively you can send a few sats directly:

btc logo BTC ln logo BTC (Lightning)

btc tip qr

33ELQ1ye29gB6YVQY6zRLFVCNYkJez9jMh

lightning tip qr

lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7cm0d9hxxmmjdejhytnfduhkcmn4wfkz7urp0yhn2vryv5ukvdm995ckydph956rvv3h94sk2dny95mkgv34xdsnvvrpv4jxz6whyrn