* Chain Split! *

Bitcoin
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I published my latest Youtube video HERE.

This video captures my live reaction as BIP-110 mandatory signaling began and Bitcoin split into competing chains.

I had two separate Mempool instances running side-by-side: one following the BIP-110 rules and one following the existing consensus rules, so I could watch events unfold in real time.

The first block after mandatory signaling was mined by AntPool, a large Chinese pool, and it was non-compliant with BIP-110. Soon after, Roughnecks, a miner on OCEAN who have been mavericks in the spam war and had been signaling support for some time, mined a BIP-110-compliant block, creating the chain split. At that point, we had real hope that the BIP-110 side might win.

A second large Chinese pool, F2Pool, then extended the non-compliant chain. The question became whether the major U.S. pools might be enforcing BIP-110, potentially overtaking that chain and wiping out those blocks.

Then came one of the most unexpected moments: a second miner on OCEAN, Simple Mining, happened to find the next block - and it was on the non-compliant chain. The timing was almost absurd, and it was a pretty crushing moment for anyone hoping to see BIP-110 succeed.

Finally, Foundary, a major U.S. pool, mined another non-compliant block. At that point, it became clear that BIP-110 did not have a chance to realistically win.

This is the raw reaction as it happened: optimism, uncertainty, a bizarre statistical twist, and ultimately the realization that the soft fork was not going to activate successfully.

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Hello Paul I had forktower running, I had upgraded to start9 4 now after the spilt my LND is stuck updating the chain and shows no channels. I have restarted everything after spilt? Wayne

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I’ll be posting a video showing how to recover from the chain split (for those who want to remain on the legacy chain to fight another day). Forktower can continue to prevent your channel partners from cheating, but your lightning node unfortunately cannot function on the network if it remains on the BIP-110 side of the chain split. Your channels are likely closed and any outbound liquidity sitting in your base layer wallet (or soon to be after the grace period) on the legacy chain. You won’t see it from the BIP-110 chain since it is stalled and no transactions are confirming.

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I do not see Knots (pre RDTS) in the Marketplace for 0.3.5. Am I out of luck and stuck having to upgrade to 0.4.0?

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Yes, there are two options – update (recommended, which I’ll be covering in the video) or side-load a pre-RDTS package. If you prefer to stay on 0.3.5.1, then I can point you to a package to side-load.

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For now I have to stop the bleeding and at least recover my Lightning channels if I can. So sideload is a must at this point…but Ill wait for your video

I will upgrade to 0.4.0 but that is going to take some work.

I might have already lost the channels for good though

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There is a guide to upgrading to v4 by Start9 which makes it fairly easy. Removing any services you don’t use helps as it cuts down on the upgrade time. Then backing up your services is required before you begin.