Quote from: knightdk on January 19, 2016, 03:39:03 AM

There is no automatic method of dealing with such a situation since such a situation is unlikely. Should the internet go down, we have much bigger problems to worry about than just Bitcoin fragmenting.

Correct; and your argument is one that everyone loves to make. Although, during times of such "bigger problems", having access to a global medium of exchange, such as Bitcoin, would be a catalyst for faster rebuilding. So I do think it's worth considering.

Quote from: knightdk on January 19, 2016, 03:39:03 AM

There is actually no way for a node to know whether the network has fragmented due to internet disruptions. How would a node distinguish between miners getting blocked, miners hardware failing and thus unable to mine, miners choosing to stop mining, or simply bad luck? There is no way for a node to know that there was a disruption.

My proposal is to simply look at the difficulty and compare it to what was previously in the blockchain. If it deviates by a margin, we know that something has happened, and that a significant part of the network is no longer available... so what now? Some scenarios can be modelled - and the network can adapt based on our best predictions of these situations. Ie. it can increase the block time by a margin... and only accept that parts of the network are indeed not coming back, after a reasonable amount of time.

Look, perhaps this doesn't need to be in Bitcoin, and can be implemented in some other kind of Post-Apocalypocoin, which can juxtapose itself so as to "rescue" Bitcoin in such a situation... I'm sure there are many people who have considered all these things - I just can't find any of their reasoning or models online, hence this post.

Quote from: knightdk on January 19, 2016, 03:39:03 AM

Furthermore, a node doesn't know about the number of nodes online. The only way to know that would be to maintain connections to every single node, which a node is not able to do. It requires too many resources.

Not necessary.

Quote from: knightdk on January 19, 2016, 03:39:03 AM

Bitcoin should not cater to this since such an event would be incredibly rare. Even if internet censors were blocking connections, methods of bypassing that through Tor and proxies will still bypass those filters and allow nodes to connect through firewalls, albeit slowly. Even so, miners could communicate with others around the firewall and a plan could be worked out to prevent the fragmentation of the network.

Then why use Bitcoin at all? Why not just trust the banks... you know, banks lying to us and forging documents is arguably equally rare, right?

Anyways, thanks for your response and getting the conversation going