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Comment by jsnathan | Hacker News Reader

Chains splitting off is a very interesting phenomenon. Just like with Ethereum Classic splitting off Ethereum, the value of the original chain can be divided into two, albeit unequal, parts. The process may even create new value - though I suppose it might just as well destroy value.

What I've also wondered about though is multiple chains combining into one. Does anyone know if this has happened before?

I believe there is a strong analogy here to how company stock can evolve, when companies are either split out as separate entities, or merged into one, respectively.

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> multiple chains combining into one. Does anyone know if this has happened before?

I don't think it happened on any meaningful chain. It could be donetechnically through a proof-of-burn on the giving chain, and the corresponding minting on the receiving chain.

Something loosely comparable would be conversion from a token to another within the same blockchain, and this must have happened quite a few times on Ethereum; but that's within a single blockchain, so arguably doesn't count.

However when you see how difficult it is, in terms of governance, to address such an obvious issue as Bitcoin's tiny throughput, I can't imagine two distinct chains agree, in a timely fashion, both on the principle of a merge, and on the way to execute it. Maybe on-chain governance, as proposed by Tezos, will fix this problematic indecisiveness on blockchain evolutions, we'll see.

I haven't read the Tezos paper yet but I will add it to my reading list. Thanks!

I do think there is a lot of potential room for improvement in how blockchain governance works, especially in terms of delegate voting.

Maybe it is more reasonable to expect a majority portion of one chain and a majority portion of another chain to merge, leaving behind two stragglers, and then allow those who continue to hold the old tokens to buy in later at a decreasing discount.

Multiple chains that have diverged in the past can never join together. Unless you want to double the amount of total coins in the network. Its technically possible if two different chains wanted to merge they could decide on which block they will merge at, but there is the huge issue of agreeing on an exchange rate between the both old coins to the new coins.

From a strict ledger of transactions metaphor of the blockchain they could be joined without double value but it'd require that all blocks from both chains were strictly disjoint sets of transactions and no account overspent when combining both chains. On a more real technical level though the protocol doesn't have a way to have two parent blocks even if the two chains satisfied the conditions to avoid double spending.

Right, and that's a lot like agreeing on an acquisition price in the case of a merger. There too stock in the acquired company is commonly traded for stock in the acquiring company at agreed upon prices.

And technically, I think it must remain possible as long as you can always simply issue a new token with a certain starting distribution.

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