[bhaak]

> If ETH were PoS at the time of the split, it would be a lot less obvious from the chainstate which one people would choose to use. Both chains' participants would try to make it look like their chains had more users by some other means. But the point in the article is that those "other means" are not only costly actions, but also the marginal cost each fork can afford for these actions is, in equilibrium, equal to their respective marginal revenues.

You forget that when the ETH/ETC split happened, the hashrate fluctuated immensely after the Poloniex listed ETC (and ETCs price skyrocketed) and many miners switched to mine ETC.

Now in hindsight it is obvious but during the chaotic days, it wasn't obvious which chain would be worth more in the future. That ETH had more POW done at that moment was unimportant. You had to use other means to decide which chain to use.

[jude-]

In other words, the PoW scores on ETH and ETC after the fork ultimately were predictive of how much one token was valued versus another. You are right that there was uncertainty at first -- and it was reflected in how much PoW each chain got! -- but for someone who's just now coming into crypto with no a priori knowledge of the event, the higher PoW score on ETH is indicative of higher market demand. Which is exactly my point.