Re:Lightning Network Skepticism
by josephpoon on Friday December 25, 2015 @03:43PM
(#10792302)
I'm presuming 3dfan is assuming some kind of split in merchant/exchange acceptance, I agree this is less likely, though. However, in a hardfork, you can be sure there will be some kind of forkA/forkB exchange site that will emerge (not at a 1-to-1 exchange rate, of course).
Anyway, I think this is extremely unlikely to happen, because:
1) It requires 50% of miners to cooperate to even create a >1MB chain
2) Anyone using the old chain would be insecure, due to lack of mining power making it susceptible to a 51% attack.
3) If that many miners were on board, it's unlikely that existing core developers would opt to continue working on an insure fork rather than admit defeat.
4) If that many miners were on board, it's unlikely that exchanges would opt to confuse users by letting them separately trade two different types of Bitcoin, rather than just switching to the more secure, more popular chain.