Gavin Andresen - 2011-03-07 21:44:18

@s{quotedtext} @s{quotedtext}
It is not a new transaction type-- transactions could always have multiple TxOuts.

However, to prevent a denial-of-service attack (which was actually attempted-- see block 71036) transactions with more than 2 TxOuts are currently dropped by clients instead of relayed.

Now that there is a need for it, the rules allow "reasonable" multi-output transactions, but still denies "unreasonable" ones (reasonable means:  is one of the 2 standard transaction types and only does one ECDSA signature verification per recipient).

So:  no, this won't cause a block chain split.  And no, old miners will not disagree with new miners, so double-spending is not possible.