Conceptually I don't understand why it isn't backwards compatible. I thought the main change was the signing software not necessarily the nodes. Or is this different from the "expand 16 ring sigs to 100k" thing?

I don't know, all I know is hear say that xmr regularly hard forks. Not sure how that scales exactly. Surely it's working if that's what's happening. Is it because there are so few people running the infrastructure that they can all easily stay up to date or is there some communication layer built in that keeps everyone informed on how to stay on the consensus/heaviest chain? I'm curious.

There's always at least 6 months of warning and discussion before a fork date. But yeah, you need to know it's happening. You wouldnt be able to spend after the fork block height. The old chain dies pretty quickly as theres no incentive to keep mining it so you need to join the new chain in order to spend.

After the fork height the new software rejects the old consensus rules by design. Upgrade or be left on a unsupported chain.

Trust the leader forks, don't ask questions

The last fork was 4yrs ago. There aren't regular forks anymore.

As with all other self-hosted software, if you want to be self-sovereign you need to keep somewhat up-to-date and update your tech every once in a while. There are thousands of nodes and god knows how many miners, so it seems like there are enough people out there that manage to do that. Also if you're running a node it tells you when there is a new version available. At least I'm pretty sure I saw that note in the logs of my node. The notion that everyone needs to run a node is just BS. The capable people should do it and should run infrastructure for their friends/family/community. Trust in small circles is normal and healthy and it's enough if one of them does it.

Long meetings on IRC.

"Consensus" means that ALL parties agree right? If you've ever tried to do real consensus in a nuanced and difficult subject with more than a dozen people you know its fucking impossible and it means nothing happens. This is part of why bitcoiners dont understand governance. They aren't doing "consensus". Nobody is, except for some hippies on a commune somewhere where they can afford to spend weeks deciding what color to paint the new ashram. So it's in everybody's best interest that they examine the REAL governance systems the projects they care about are using. Which is usually "the people who were in the meeting generally agreed" whether it was to raise OP_RETURN or hard fork for better privacy or whatever.

Yeah sorry That was a little abstract and unclear maybe. Idk if monero people are more plugged into the details or not. I think both communities trust the devs and influencer class A LOT. I think the monero devs are better trusted than Bitcoin Core tho. As long as they (the devs) continue optimizing for private digital cash that seems to be well placed trust. But things change. And if they do I'd expect part of the community to execute a contentious hardfork a la Bip110. So not that different maybe, just smaller. Like Bitcoin before the blocksize war.

I should clarify, your pre-fork utxos are still fine. The new chain knows what to do with them. You just need to make transactions according to the current rules (ie update your wallet) after you come out of the coma. Forking is hard because there are lots of ways to do it and they all have subtle differences.

lmao I thought that guy hated monero....? Pretty sure he has me blocked.

People update their node and wallet software and move on. No contentious chains splits. One almost happened in 2018 I understand but it died out.

You mean because users will always use new sub addresses and never reuse addresses at all? Because if they do and it's all out in the open, their address reuse is degrading the entire privacy of the network. Iow, *your privacy is dependent upon how other people are using the network. Which is NOT the case if the transaction graph is simply hidden by default. That is why Monero hides the transaction graph. I don't care if the government knows that I donated $10 or $10,000 to wikileaks, I don't want them to know I donated to wikileaks at all.

Yeah none of that had anything to do with what I said. Thanks for playing!

Bro i explained why monero hides the transaction graph. Which isn't that edgy or difficult to understand. its actually weird you're like "why would you do that" But instead of explaining or talking about that, you responded with a long rambling non sequitur Like you always do 👍

Come on mr. blockchain theorist. The supply guarantee does *not* require the graph to be visible. Commitment balance + range proofs + emission curve are all self-contained *per-transaction or per-block checks* Full graph transparency is not a requirement for "no inflation." The supply guarantee DOES require that key-image uniqueness be sound and fully checkable. That's the piece the obscuration interacts with. As long as, range proofs are sound, every input is proven to be a genuinely-existing prior output, every output is spent at most once (key-image uniqueness), then you cannot create XMR out of nothing, no matter how hidden the graph is. That's the real invariant, and obscuring links doesn't touch it provided the uniqueness and membership mechanisms are sound and verifiable. So it looks like yeah, you don't understand what unlinkability means. Because it does not break the guarantee of supply.

A tx has to use valid outputs. And the outputs are there, visible. Theres always the possibility that a sneaky super hacker could figure out how to create a Bitcoin utxo from thin air too, this concern doesn't have anything to do with obscuring the transaction graph. But if you're concerned about proof soundness I'm checking every key image myself so I'll know in a few days. The database is public. Anybody can check if a curve point exists and was created by a prior spend and if it's key image is unspent.

Anybody can check that every member in a ring signature is a valid ouput existing on the chain (membership). They don't need to know which one is the true spend (unlinkability).

Mises never commented on fixed supply. No economist EVER suggested having a fixed supply of monetary units. Because its a stupid idea and bad monetary policy.

Like how you know unlinkability means you cant prove chain membership? nevent1qqsqqqy6pac7gpqnknk9aaxxt0fthfw3wxj5jqegnww0vzedgjrjh0spr3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmqpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxjar5duh8qatzqgs0npwnpyvheqz7zuvuwvv9k460c0hyqlturds40hhfn34vufvehwc3rg04e

Monero decided long ago to do "good enough" privacy and use ring signatures rather than go to zcash route. Because they're dead simple, not " A lot of shenanigans" Coinbases are transparent. And it doesn't back up what you said at all. A 3rd party *does not* know the true spend (1 of 16) A 3rd party *does* know no coins were created. Auditability with an obfuscated transaction graph. But totally correct a one of 16 is not perfect unlinkability. It was always a less than ideal fix for sender privacy. Hence the move to full chain membership proofs.