Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: SPV wallets AREN'T safe for the upcoming segwit2x attack
by
exstasie
on 18/10/2017, 20:37:27 UTC
So the Electrum wallet will follow segwit2x?
I dont't know what Electrum will do. The whole point of bitcoin is to not have to wait to what will someone else do for you.

There is a risk that SPV wallets will follow the longest chain or the one with the most hashrate.

You can set up your Electrum wallet to connect to whatever servers you want. Here is a list of of Electrum servers on the Bitcoin mainnet, along with which version most of them are running: https://uasf.saltylemon.org/electrum

When in doubt, don't do anything, and wait until some good tutorials are available for properly splitting coins and avoiding replay attacks. There is still time for BTC1 to add replay protection, and I hope they do. Otherwise SPV wallet users are indeed in danger.

What's the point in even *having* a consensus mechanism if you're too afraid to let it do its job?  

The most-work chain is only part of the consensus mechanism. The whitepaper and cursory observation of the Bitcoin network confirm that validity is integral to the consensus process, and that incompatibility breaks consensus (split networks). That is to say, users (including miners) can leave the consensus anytime they want. But they cannot change the consensus reached by the prior network.

The reason that this is an issue is because SPV users don't enforce Bitcoin's rules. They could just as easily follow a chain with 84 million BTC, as long as transaction/output format is preserved.