Quote from: Desolator on September 20, 2012, 09:22:06 PM

Quote from: Piper67 on September 19, 2012, 03:54:41 PM

Precisely... and the original protocols are still alive. It's quite possible to improve upon them,

That's what I don't get. If anyone could arbitrarily alter the protocol, they could rewrite it to route 10% of all transactions to themselves Tongue

So can't the protocol never be altered ever without shutting down bitcoin and starting over with a new chain? Who could alter the protocol and how?

The way I understand it, the writers of the bitcoin client software could just rewrite the code to say whatever they want and say that is the new protocol. As long as it doesn't contradict existing blocks, it would technically "work." But if there were 3 bitcoin clients and 1 decided to do things differently, their data would get rejected by everyone who has the other 2 and thus the network as a whole. That's why I'm a little concerned that the entire network is in the hands of a couple people who wrote the one and only client software. Didn't they publicly release the code too?!?! There should be as many bitcoin clients as torrent clients at this point. For safety reasons, someone write another one! lol.

(of course then if there were 100 clients, any one of them could be rigged to steal your wallet so if you want to use an alternative client, you have no idea if it's legit or not)

think about like this
bitcoin protocol 1.1.0 - works fine everyone loves it
bitcoin protocol 1.1.1 - works even better everyone loves it
bitcoin protocol 2.0.0 - not everyone agrees to this change... buttcoin protocol 1.0.0 is created! some stay with bitcoin and other move to buttcoin.

the protocol can be altered, but everyone has to agree on it, if anyone disagrees then a fork can be created.

so far the forks we've seen have nothing to do with a disagreement in protocol change, its just some guys looking to make money by starting a bitcoin fork.

I do not think the protocol will ever be changed so much so that people start to disagree and create forks.
honestly i dont give a @#$& how it works as long as it keeps its core properties.

I say dont be afraid of protocol changes, embrace them for what they are; Improvements.