<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub1jkdfcglr59lwnhek94l393g0hhhaj0v5yzz3n5s3p0r9u0576sgs7373ck</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub1jkdfcglr59lwnhek94l393g0hhhaj0v5yzz3n5s3p0r9u0576sgs7373ck</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2014-04-25&#xA;📝 Original message:On 25/04/14 00:28, Mike Hearn wrote:&#xA;&gt; Why are we here? We are here because we were brought together by shared&#xA;&gt; goals.&#xA;&gt; &#xA;&gt; What are those goals? They were defined at the start of the project by&#xA;&gt; the creator of the project.&#xA;&gt; &#xA;&gt; Why do we issue 21 million coins and not 42? Because 21 million is the&#xA;&gt; goal everyone signed up for.&#xA;&#xA;Mike: the blockchain is a public document, with a very public and well&#xA;defined interpretation, which we&#39;ve all signed up for too.&#xA;&#xA;What&#39;s the point of piling PoW on top of some data to make it difficult&#xA;to modify if the interpretation itself is open to modification?&#xA;&#xA;There is an important distinction to draw between a hard fork via a&#xA;change in block validation rules, and a hard fork via a change in the&#xA;/interpretation of the blockchain itself/.&#xA;&#xA;Bitcoin validates data /before/ it makes it into a block; we can all be&#xA;confident that, short of a reorg, /if it&#39;s in a block, it&#39;s the law/. As&#xA;much as the 21m cap is the law anyway.&#xA;&#xA;Proving that you can convince the economic majority that the&#xA;interpretation of existing blocks is in any way up for grabs would set a&#xA;dangerous precedent, and shake some people&#39;s faith in Bitcoin&#39;s overall&#xA;robustness and security (well, mine anyway.)&#xA;&#xA;My 2 bits.&#xA;&#xA;-Gareth&#xA;&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;A non-text attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;Name: signature.asc&#xA;Type: application/pgp-signature&#xA;Size: 555 bytes&#xA;Desc: OpenPGP digital signature&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20140425/864fe1bb/attachment.sig&gt;</html></oembed>