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by cflynnus
1371 days ago
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> It's also a software upgrade because that $194 billion transaction only happens if enough users of the software have chosen to upgrade and run the new software by then instead of the old software (don't worry, it looks like most of them have). The necessary software was only ready to use a couple of weeks ago. "upgrade" is the wrong term. Not 100% of users will accept the new software so after this event called "The Merge" there will be 2 competing Ethereum networks (actually 3 because there's already "ethereum classic" from the last time Ethereum forked). The correct term is "fork." Yes the Vitalik endorsed fork will acquire most of the economic value, but that just highlights the degree to which Ethereum is centralized. There are key figures in ETH that force breaking rules changes on users. Bitcoin is very different. |
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It's not actually that simple. After the merge, non-upgraded PoW nodes will automatically wind down and self-destruct according to the built-in difficulty bomb curve which is part of PoW.
For PoW Ethereum to continue running in a useful way to whoever wants to use it, a majority of PoW users would need to upgrade to a new PoW fork that changes the difficulty bomb curve. They have to coordinate and agree that fork, as different bomb curves are incompatible.
That would require a majority of PoW users to perform a coordinated softare upgrade, agreed with each other. There's no default PoW Ethereum that can keep working for a long time if people don't deliberately agree on and roll out a new fork.
> Bitcoin is very different.
Bitcoin has a difficulty bomb too (when coin issuing stops), so Bitcoin may eventually self-destruct too, if nobody steps up to coordinate a new fork of Bitcoin and a majority of users accept the new fork.