Aaron van Wirdum's avatar
Aaron van Wirdum 1 month ago
For anyone still interested in this clown show... @Luke Dashjr tried to push through a soft fork on Bitcoin-jr with ~one day notice, to freeze newly generated block rewards. The rules just went into effect, and now that blockchain has split between upgraded and non-upgraded nodes. Whether the split is temporary or permanent (Bitcoin-jr v. Bitcoin-jr Classic) remains to be seen. To watch it unfold live, grab some popcorn and tune into this fork observer vibe coded by @zender 🟨⬛ bitcoinomad:
ForkMonitor
ForkMonitor · frozen coinbase-maturity observations
Frozen chain-split observations and the September 2026 split history.

Replies (15)

Aaron van Wirdum's avatar
Aaron van Wirdum 1 month ago
The chain with the new rules is currently ahead, which means the blocks on the old rules were wiped out. In other words, no split currently. Interestingly, the new chain is ahead because AlphaPool is mining on it. This is the exact pool they consider a bad actor and is why this soft fork was rolled put in the first place... ...and this pool won't even be able to spend these block rewards, perhaps ever!
Aaron van Wirdum's avatar
Aaron van Wirdum 1 month ago
So yeah it looks like the new rules are being enforced by a majority of miners, which means that any blocks that don't enforce these rules keep getting wiped out, and there is no chain split. Will be interesting to see if the coinbase freeze gets extended in the upcoming 45 days, given that this was pretty explicitely targeted at "bad actor" AlphaPool... who now helped ensure Luke's soft fork is the majority chain.
1 replies ↓
DZC's avatar
DZC 1 month ago
Mmmm... 🤔 Whats the logic here? What will achieve extending to 45 days the maturity of mined coins? It will make mining economics more difficult to estimate, sure. To every miner. But how that will affect a bad actor in a different way?
2 replies ↓
DZC's avatar
DZC 1 month ago
Ah, ok. I see it now. They're not just extending the coin maturity, they're redefining what kind of mining is allowed completely... With as many forks as needed on the go? 🙄 image
Aaron van Wirdum's avatar
Aaron van Wirdum 1 month ago
The plan has three stages. 1. Freeze coinbase rewards for 45 days. 2. If no “unintended side effects”, extend coinbase freeze for full year. 3. By the end of that year only allow DATUM-mined block rewards to be spent… somehow. 1 & 2 are to disincentivize “opportunistic shitcoin miners” that just want to mine and sell the coins for profit… or something.
1 replies ↓
DZC's avatar
DZC 1 month ago
Thanks for the info. Once you've started changing consensus rules once, you can't stop it there, I'm afraid. 😳
Scrotus's avatar
Scrotus scrotus@nostrplebs.com 1 month ago
I'm trying to see what they are so upset about, and the only thing that makes sense is they don't want miners who dump the new coins because that presumably makes it harder to push the price higher.
Aaron van Wirdum's avatar
Aaron van Wirdum 1 month ago
They claim they're battling mining centralization but yes I think that's the real motivation behind this.
Archiesta's avatar
Archiesta Bortolomaeus@BitcoinNostr.com 1 month ago
How would you prevent a 51% attack or the possibility of one? You would let it just happen. Your statements miss a lot of context and nuance like a strategic gatekeeper would do.
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