1/ In the event of a global internet shutdown, would that lead to a temporary halt of all transaction processing, with everything going back to normal as the internet is "switched back on"?
2/ During the shutdown, miners would still mine on their own local networks, and you would essentially get thousands of chain splits occurring as each miner mined its own chain separately.
3/ As the internet comes back on, all the “lighter” (less pow) chains would be wiped out in favour of the “heavier” (more pow) chain.
4/ A transaction could also still occur during the internet shutdown as long as a user could find some way of delivering that transaction data to all the miners or the few miners they considered have the greatest chance of building the heaviest chain.
5/ Sharing transaction data isn't as hard as it sounds—tx data is very small and suited for low-bandwidth, non-internet transmission methods like SMS and radio.
6/ Smaller miners would also be highly financially incentivised to find one or more ways of communicating their block production to one another, so that they can compete with the larger independent mines. No one wants to miss out on those block rewards.
7/ Sharing block data is harder than it sounds, because the block data is a lot more bandwidth-intensive than transaction data, so is not suited for most non-internet networking solutions—yet another reason to keep bitcoin blocks small!
8/ Nevertheless, the incentives might lead to a majority of miners finding a way to connect connected in some form or another even without the internet. Radio, wifi, mesh, satellite, sneakernet—some very powerful economic forces would be a big motivation.
9/ In a global internet shutdown, the bitcoin network would be hampered significantly for sure, and the world may have bigger problems, but bitcoin still has the potential to keep truckin' those blocks.
10/ A global internet shutdown might seem laughably impossible, but bitcoin is supposed to withstand those edge cases.
https://twitter.com/nwoodfine/status/1214240205768495109?s=20
11/ And in this age of increasingly globalised financial regulation and compliance, perhaps the idea of a global, coordinated blacklist or whitelist on internet traffic doesn't seem so far-fetched, and could have a similar effect on bitcoin as an outright shutdown.
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