Softfork: Difference between revisions
Eldentyrell (talk | contribs) Created page with "A Softfork is a change to the bitcoin protocol that requires only a majority of the miners upgrade. New transaction types can often be added as softforks, requiring only that..." |
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A | A softfork is a change to the bitcoin protocol wherein only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid. | ||
Since old nodes will recognise the new blocks as valid, a softfork is backward-compatible. | |||
This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules. | |||
New transaction types can often be added as softforks, requiring only that the sender and | New transaction types can often be added as softforks, requiring only that the participants (sender and receiver) and miners understand the new transaction type. | ||
This is done by having the new transaction appear to older clients as a "pay-to-anybody" transaction (of a special form), and getting the miners to agree to reject blocks including these transaction unless the transaction validates under the new rules. | |||
This is how [[P2SH]] was added to Bitcoin. | |||
See also: [[Hardfork]] | See also: [[Hardfork]] | ||
Revision as of 23:14, 23 March 2014
A softfork is a change to the bitcoin protocol wherein only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognise the new blocks as valid, a softfork is backward-compatible. This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules.
New transaction types can often be added as softforks, requiring only that the participants (sender and receiver) and miners understand the new transaction type. This is done by having the new transaction appear to older clients as a "pay-to-anybody" transaction (of a special form), and getting the miners to agree to reject blocks including these transaction unless the transaction validates under the new rules. This is how P2SH was added to Bitcoin.
See also: Hardfork