# Gavin Andresen
# 2011-03-18 00:42:43
# https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4575.msg67132#msg67132

How long is the split?  There's really no problem if the split is less than the block generation maturation time (20+ hours)@p{--} a bunch of miners will be disappointed on one side of the split or the other, but that's about the extent of the damage. @p{par}

Longer than 24 hours... is kind of hard to imagine for a big country. @p{par}

Would transactions continue to be processed:  yes, but...  the sudden drop in network hashing rate (and the drastic slow-down in block generation) might trigger future safety checks in Bitcoin, so you might have to do something special to tell it "yes, I really do want to generate transactions even though something weird is happening with the network." @p{par}

If a little country or region got split from the main network, it will probably have a lot less hashing power and it will take much longer to generate the 100 blocks needed to start to cause problems.  That's a feature, not a bug. @p{par}

After communication was restored the more-difficulty block chain would "win" and transactions from the losing block chain would get retransmitted and move over to the more-difficulty chain. @p{par}

If somebody had a super-secret communication channel that worked during the split they could use it to double-spend.  But if the bad guys have a super-secret channel then probably some good guys would, too, and as jgarzik points out, it only takes one little link to relay blocks and prevent a split. @p{brk}