> On Sunday, November 15, 2015 1:02:33 AM Peter R via bitcoin-dev wrote: >> A group of us have been exploring this “meta-cognition” idea with Bitcoin >> Unlimited. For example, Bitcoin Unlimited can be (optionally) made to >> automatically fork to the longest chain if it “gets stuck” and can neither >> prove that a block is valid nor that the block is invalid. > > This situation isn't something that can be ignored and simply moved past. If > you can't determine the validity of a block, you also cannot process its > results correctly. Taking for example the BDB/LevelDB issue, the result was > that BDB failed to accept further changes to the UTXO set. Unless the UTXO > set > could be updated correctly, there is no way to even attempt to validate the > next block or any new transactions.
Great point, Luke! Indeed, whether the program can or cannot continue after a Type 1 consensus mismatch depends on the specifics of the situation and exactly how the code was written. But I agree: there are cases where the program *can’t* continue. In those cases it would halt. This would require manual intervention to fix but avoids the problem of potential double-spends during the fork event. This would be preferable to knowingly causing a fork. Peter _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
