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Bitcoin Blockchain Forked By Backward-Compatibility Issue

Posted by Unknown on from the blame-california dept.

New submitter jhantin writes "The Bitcoin blockchain has forked due to a lurking backward-compatibility issue: versions older than 0.8 do not properly handle blocks larger than about 500k, and Slush's pool mined a 974k block today. The problem is that not all mining operations are on 0.8; blocks are being generated by a mix of several different versions of the daemon, each making its own decision as to which of the two forks is preferable to extend, and older versions refuse to honor or extend from a block of this size. The consensus on #bitcoin-dev is damage control: miners need to mine on pre-0.8 code so the backward-compatible fork will outgrow and thus dominate the compatibility-breaking one; merchants need to stop accepting transactions until the network re-converges on the backward-compatible fork of the chain; and average users can ignore the warning that they are out of sync and need to upgrade." Turns out there's an approximately 512K limit to atomic updates in Berkeley DB which were used by versions prior to 0.8. 0.8 uses a new database, allowing blockchains that old versions won't accept to be created.

2 of 351 comments (clear)

  1. SELL!!! SELL!!! SELL!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    OMG!! THIS IS THE ENDZ!!!

    Everybody needs to get rid of their bitcoin. With this news, it is official - bitcoin is WORTHLESS!!! If you have any, you need to SELL! Get rid of it all while you still can!

    There are plenty of SUCKERS out there still willing to purchase (out of ignorance) these worthless non-existent fantasy moneys. The US Dollar is real. Bitcoin is not.

    It's only a matter of time before the inevitable disastrous plummet. In fact, they are practically already worthless, so why not just send them to my bitcoin address?

    Send your worthless, fake bits of so-called "currency" here, so you don't have to worry about it anymore : 12p7uyzjzSvjRK2MWBB4FUim5aSz8nXLRS

    You're welcome.

  2. Re:Ooh, exciting! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Do you fucking morons really not realize that some people did the math already? Mining is profitable, otherwise we wouldn't do it. It's getting harder and harder but now ASICs are coming out which mine a lot more BTC than you need to pay electricity with.