I think he or she will, something in my heart tells me they are still alive. I don`t think they will reveal their location or who they are, but I do think they will post on this forum in the next 5 years. It is only a matter of time before some big big rogue miners or bitcoin devs do something he or she do not like or see`s a problem with and they will have to come back and have a voice in the matter.
for bitcoin's sake, i hope that never happens.
one of the reasons bitcoin is so superior to altcoins is its decentralized and consensus-based development process. unlike ethereum or ripple or bitcoin cash or BSV---which have small numbers of extremely influential developers and decision makers who can economically coerce users into following their forks---bitcoin development is merit-based, consensus-based. with bitcoin, there is no vitalik buterin figure to pressure the network into accepting the ethereum foundation's roadmap.
i believe this is one of the reasons satoshi left and also why he/they will never return.
It will probably start by him or her saying something like this.
"Keep using the longest chain" or maybe "use this chain instead from now on"
I did a poll earlier a few months ago I think 19 out of 20 people said they would use whatever satoshi said.
that's terrible. if developers are deciding the blockchain state, then the network doesn't operate by decentralized consensus at all!
SHA-256 is very strong. It's not like the incremental step from MD5 to SHA1. It can last several decades unless there's some massive breakthrough attack.
If SHA-256 became completely broken, I think we could come to some agreement about what the honest block chain was before the trouble started, lock that in and continue from there with a new hash function.
If the hash breakdown came gradually, we could transition to a new hash in an orderly way. The software would be programmed to start using a new hash after a certain block number. Everyone would have to upgrade by that time. The software could save the new hash of all the old blocks to make sure a different block with the same old hash can't be used.