After several months, I wrote about bitcoin again. The mood is quite different. I remember talking at the beginning of the year about the irreconcilable contradictions between miners and developers, and that the PoW form of Bitcoin would eventually be a major hazard. Because this is not only a problem of power consumption, but also a problem of too centralized calculation, which makes the whole network hijacked by a small number of large miners.
A few months later, these contradictions have been completely open and white hot. On August 1, some miners represented by ViaBTC openly forked out the first BitCoin Cash (BCC). The logic of their bifurcations is:
SegWit and lightning networks are not strongly supported.
We should be the successors of the Chinese Ben spirit.
We need to upgrade to a large 8MB block to solve the problem of expansion.
These reasons are magnificent and can be used to fool some fools and speculators, but it is totally impossible to make a thorough analysis. Because:
Not supporting isolated witness and lightning network, especially lightning network, actually protects the interests of miners and harms the interests of users. Because ordinary users can enjoy the benefits of lightning networks such as faster and lower fees. Don't blame BlockStream for making a fortune through the Lightning Network, because the Lightning Network business you can do, Lightning Network itself is just a better and more advanced technology;
He didn't think so, and he didn't need you to inherit.
8MB does not solve the problem of BTC expansion, because you are just BCC, not BTC. The BCC network itself does not have much volume and does not need expansion.
If everyone can be honest and make their bifurcation logic clear, BCC's bifurcation logic can be written in this way:
I'm going to make a currency I can control. I'm going to train my own development team and get rid of those nasty core developers.
I need to take the opportunity to publicize and promote my viabtc exchange.
I want to blow a bubble and let more leeks and speculators rush in, so that I can earn a fortune from China.
As a miner, this is only a part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, and now through bifurcation from the athletes, a sudden upgrade, can also serve as a referee, why not! In the near future, miners will say, "I will modify the algorithm so that mine can be more efficient."
Let's not criticize BCC anymore. After all, it is a legitimate chain of bifurcations. On October 25, another miner came out and said, "We need to make Bitcoin more decentralized. We need to resist ASIC mining. We need to replace SHA265 with Equihash algorithm. We need to make Bitcoin only carry out GPU mining!"
Of course, the most important thing he didn't say is that because I can't do ASIC on BitContinent, I have a bunch of GPU miners on hand. Hey hey!
Not to mention predigits and so on, so bit gold BitCoin Gold (BTG) appeared. This is too lazy to talk about, because there should be a lot of bit silver and bit brass chains behind, so just joke about them.
Then, the joke was simply unable to laugh. Constant and uncontrolled divergence is eroding people's trust in Bitcoin (especially those who understand Bitcoin, except fools and speculators), which will eventually collapse one day.
Before the end of the matter, a bigger crisis is coming. The miners will have 2X bifurcation in mid-November, which is also the biggest division and the main struggle between the miners (or BU, of course, not that there is no disagreement between the miners, who represent the main force) and core.
The miners had a good reason for this divergence, and Core blatantly tore up the New York consensus without any contractual spirit. After 6 months of activation, the size of the block will be doubled. How can we go back on it? Core said that 1M size is enough, because after activating isolation witness, the actual maximum block size has reached 4M, and isolation witness already has 70% expansion effect, and it is expected to solve performance problems after activating lightning network. Moreover, if the block size is increased to 2M, it means that the maximum block size will be 8M, which may cause a lot of difficult problems to be solved, so it is not supported! uuuuuuuuuu
Core is not prepared to give in this time. BU has no way back. This is not only a matter of face, but also of economic interests and voice. Core has more user support, core code and technology, and BU has an absolute majority of computing power, which is a balanced struggle. So Mars will hit the earth, and whoever wins and loses will be determined by the market.
But no matter who wins or loses, in fact, everyone has already lost. Bitcoin has already lost. When the total number of bitcoins is no longer capped at 21 million, it has already lost. Those bifurcators who claim to be the heirs of Nakamoto Spirit are not afraid to climb out of nowhere to ask you why they dare to blatantly destroy Nakamoto Spirit: the Bitcoin ceiling is 21 million!
Then rising currencies masked these crises and led people to believe that bifurcation could not stop the pace of Bitcoin. Bitcoin prices continue to rise, there are factors of value return, there are factors of international political instability (Catalonia Independence Event, etc.), there are mainstream futures markets to join the Bitcoin variety (giving people the dream of legalization of Bitcoin), there are many new people through various events to understand Bitcoin, and establish a Bitcoin. The infinite love factor is too late for them to accept these crises because they are still immersed in the excitement of discovering a rich continent like Bitcoin.
The prosperity of currency price can not eliminate the crisis. This article does not want to predict the price of bitcoins, nor is it to suggest that there is a risk of falling. Looking at the whole future, we need to broaden our minds. Digital money is a great initiative, and it will succeed. It can not be said that bitcoin is a great initiative, and it will succeed.
The bifurcation of bits exposes the shortcomings of its consensus mechanism, PoW. Especially the PoW which can not resist ASIC mining is a major hidden danger. This makes the new encryption currency more and more use its alternative: PoS.
With the continuous bifurcation of Bitcoin and every major technological transformation, Bitcoin has become less and less like the previous Bitcoin. One day, it will be hard for you to tell which currency is your real bitcoin. Bitcoin is more like a pronoun, a representative of an era, and a spirit of pursuing freedom and utopian ideals in everyone's heart.