One of the most heard comments within the different sectors of the industry that study and work with Blockchain technology is that Bitcoin is a criptomoneda and that it has no application beyond being a possible decentralized money, without having to go through the money fiat. But that vision does not include the fact that there are powerful teams working to develop solutions that go well beyond this first use and try to exploit the incredible decentralized public infrastructure of trust that Bitcoin is through its community (the same applies to Ethereum ) with solutions such as Rootstock, Blockstream sidechains or Lightning Networks. Each of these solutions has its followers and detractors, so today we are going to talk to one of these defenders, to explain their vision of that great ecosystem that is being created around Bitcoin.
It is necessary to differentiate two concepts that are alike in form but are distinct:
-Bitcoin (with capital B): A distributed protocol that takes into account technological, economic, psychological and ideological aspects for its correct functioning.
- bitcoin (with lowercase b): like the necessary gasoline that runs that protocol (the criptomoneda or token).
Bitcoin can be defined as a new form of internet. A new protocol that works as a network of settlement where a series of accounting notes are recorded that indicate who has what. The most important features are its public and open nature (called permissionless in English), its decentralization and immutability and its open, transparent and participatory code. For its correct operation, the network generates a reward token -bitcoin- that is offered to the miners. The data are grouped into blocks that are closed every 10 minutes on average and succeed each other by generating a block chain or Blockchain
As you can see, bitcoin and blockchain are parts of a larger whole that is Bitcoin. Therefore, to affirm that Blockchain is the important thing and not Bitcoin, is completely wrong.
Based on this differentiation, we can better understand the meaning of the Sidechains and payment channels proposed in Lightning Networks. These are complementary systems that are built on the main block chain of Bitcoin and are part of this great ecosystem that is growing day after day. These systems use the computing power of the main network to keep all the security in its operation.
The possibilities of scalability and creation of new projects on the new Internet of value (Bitcoin) are enormous.
