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183

Bitcoin mining is no longer profitable (www.pcworld.com)

submitted 3 days ago by Hirom@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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[–] locuester@lemmy.zip 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

It’s the same with all the chains. An algorithm change is a breaking change. If you don’t implement it, your validating node will not continue with the rest.

Bitcoin has the BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) process. BIP-52 is an example of a proposal to change the algorithm due to energy concerns.

If the humans reach consensus it will change. However, I maintain that software can’t be programmed to adjust for social concerns - the humans have to change it.

[–] Hirom@beehaw.org 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Good point, with BIPs the Bitcoin community is more adaptive than I gave it credit for.

It still doesn't prevent soft nor hard fork. My understanding is that a change in Bitcoin's consensus logic require ALL users/miners to take action to deploy the new software to avoid hard forks. That's impossible in practice. So a BIP to change the consensus logic, either tweaking or replacing PoW, would necessary cause a hard fork even if it's approved.

Not all chains handle this the same way nor suffer from this. For instance, using Tezos means automatically accepting algorithm changes after they are approved. This makes hard forks much less likely.

Tezos incorporates a built-in, on-chain mechanism for proposing, selecting, testing, and activating protocol upgrades without the need to hard fork. This mechanism makes Tezos a self-amending blockchain and allows any user to propose changes to the economic protocol, which defines the possible blockchain operations and how they are processed.

Bitcoin sure have more hype and higher price, but appears to have more difficulty evolving compared to others.