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<p>This is not only a good question, but an important one:<br>
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<p>On 02/08/2017 01:39, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAMm+LwiNSMwDZyTTPwce5WYqWZsu=3puOyVD=eXpHKnqsD=c4Q@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">So what
happens if someone spends the coins on both forks???</div>
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<br>
Both forks have valid coins, so you doubled your coins. However the
value generally splits Presumably unevenly, presumably summed to 1.
But oddly the sum of the value of the 2 coins can surge to greater
than the original, just on the buzz.<br>
<br>
This actually an OK result. We know precisely what happens - 2 for
1 split. We know the accounting, we know what that means simply
because we know that a coin has no meaning, so two coins has two no
meanings. The only thing is that supply and demand bounce around a
bit, which is fine, another day on the markets, exciting for some
but always balanced at the end of the day. We've now run the
experiment twice and the world hasn't stopped spinning.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
But there is another question - what happens to a smart contract
that is on a chain that forks?<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://steemit.com/eos/@iang/life-is-a-cabaret-or-how-to-split-and-merge-a-blockchain">https://steemit.com/eos/@iang/life-is-a-cabaret-or-how-to-split-and-merge-a-blockchain</a><br>
<br>
We do not and can not know the answer to this question in a
completeness sense - because we don't know a priori what every smart
contract does. We do know what a cryptocurrency does, a priori,
because all it does is move numbers around. But a smart contract is
more complicated - we don't know whether it has issued rights,
whether it has imposed obligations, liabilities etc.<br>
<br>
In short, it would be the same technical effect as the coin, there
are now two contracts. Which means two sets of rights and two sets
of obligations, two sets of liabilities.<br>
<br>
If you hold the obligations and they suddenly double on you, are you
capable of meeting those? Are bankrupt, are you reneging, are you
doubling your workload?<br>
<br>
If you hold the two sets of rights, you might be happy but at the
other end of the rights are two sets of obligations, and the holder
of those might be ins strife. Or, you might find yourself delivered
with two sets of rights that are wasting because you can't consume
them fast enough, if one considers the futures market.<br>
<br>
I think the brutal conclusion is that you can't safely do
rights/liabilities/obligations in smart contracts on any chain that
has a chance of splitting.<br>
<br>
Brutally, simplistically, this probably means you shouldn't do smart
contracts on Bitcoin or Ethereum. At least until you've resolved
how you deal with the fork.<br>
<br>
In example terms, imagine Ethereum were to fork today - what would
happen to all the ERC-20 ICOs?<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
iang<br>
<br>
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