LBRY Credits LBC: Hard Fork
What's Changing
LBRY is announcing hard fork HF1807. This fork will extend how long claims are valid before they expire. Currently, claims expire after about 1.5 years unless they are updated. After the fork takes effect, claims will expire after 10 years. Existing claims that have not expired will have their expiration extended to 10 years. Any claims that expire before the fork takes effect will stay expired. We will republish them manually to preserve access to that content.
Only claim expiration is changing. The block rewards, token distribution, hash algorithms, etc. are all staying the same.
The fork will take effect at block 400155, which will occur on July 9th, 2018 at around noon EST.
What You Should Do
For most people, nothing needs to be done. The fork will take effect transparently and won't change your experience of LBRY.
If you are running a full node or mining pool, upgrade to the latest version of lbrycrd as soon as possible. Pre-built binaries are available on the releases page. You will need version 0.12.2.0 or higher.
We will post updates about this fork to this page. If you want to be notified of news about this fork and future forks, please join the fork mailing list.
Fork Details
The fork is explained in detail in this pull request, including the relevant code. Please review the details and the code if you are able to. We pay significant bounties for any bugs found in blockchain code, especially fork-related code. Email [email protected] if you wish to discuss.
What is a hardfork?
The cryptocurrency mainnet operates according to certain rules. To improve network performance or correct errors, changes are periodically introduced into it. A hard fork represents changes that are not compatible with previous versions of software supporting the cryptocurrency network. In order to continue to mine the cryptocurrency, miners need to update the software.
In some cases, as a result of a hard fork, a completely new cryptocurrency may appear, as happened with Bitcoin Cash and EthereumPoW.