Antonopoulos on Rolling Checkpoints

[Ozark]

Antonopoulos on Rolling Checkpoints

Andreas Antonopoulos explains rolling checkpoints and how consensus is achieved between miners, developers, exchanges, merchants, and wallets.

Andreas Antonopoulos Explains Rolling Checkpoints

Recently, Mastering Bitcoin author Andreas Antonopoulos released a video that explained his thoughts on the rolling 10-block checkpoint that prevents reorganizations of the BCH chain. In the video, he explained that the rolling checkpoint is a feature to protect BCH against secret mining, which could have been used to cause disruption or initiate a hostile takeover of the ABC chain. He also noted that the implementation of rolling checkpoints has the effect of shifting some power away from miners and giving it to developers.

Then, Antonopoulos explained that consensus is a multi-constituency mechanism and that checkpoints are a matter of the relative power of two constituencies in consensus. The common misconception is that consensus is achieved only between miners and developers. Instead, he argues that consensus is achieved between five different groups with overlapping influence and power: miners, developers, exchanges, merchants, and wallets. All of these parties contribute to emergent consensus.

Thus, the decision to side with rolling checkpoints is subjective to each of the five groups. Some may believe rolling checkpoints are justified as certain parties have threatened to spend millions of dollars purely to damage the ABC chain, while others may not.

Regardless of their stance, each of the five groups will express their position through a consensus vote. By deciding what software to run on their nodes, they express their consensus vote and contribute to the emergent consensus.

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