[albertgoeswoof]

> Blockchain, however, handles conflict resolution in quite a different way. If there is a net-split between Europe and the USA and two versions of the database emerge, it simply decides on re-connection to keep the entirety of the version that has received more traffic during the disruption (aka the longer chain). This means if the USA version wins, all of the modifications in the European version, even if there aren’t conflicts, are discarded. To reiterate, this means even if most of the interactions in Europe were just with other users in Europe and not in conflict with the USA version, all of those writes are thrown away regardless.

Is this really possible? I can't see why not. If so could a DoS on a specific region of nodes that's large enough to sustain it's own sub chain for a short period be possible? This would be extremely dangerous if transactions were confirmed by the network on a chain that is eventually ignored.

[zilchers]

I think it's unlikely you'd have a fully split chain, although this is actually an interesting attack against bitcoin, considering China could theoretically cause a China / rest of the world blockchain partition.

[Confiks]

The article isn't correct in that "the version that has received more traffic during the disruption" wins. The amount of transactions that are in a bitcoin block play no role in determining the longest chain. It's solely about solving the most SHA256 proof of work solutions in the shortest amount of time.

So you could say that the connected component of the netsplit graph with the highest hashrate will win with the highest probability.