Bitcoin Forks and the Future

After several months, I am writing about Bitcoin again, and my mood is completely different. I remember that at the beginning of the year, I often talked about the irreconcilable conflicts between miners and developers (core), and I felt that Bitcoin's PoW form would eventually be a major hidden danger. Because this is not only a problem of power consumption, but also the excessive centralization of computing power, which will cause the entire network to be hijacked by a few large miners.

Today, several months later, these conflicts have become completely public and heated. On August 1, some miners, represented by ViaBTC, openly forked the first Bitcoin fork chain: Bitcoin Cash (BCC). Their logic for the fork was:

1. Strongly do not support Segregated Witness (SegWit) and Lightning Network;

2. We want to be the inheritors of Satoshi Nakamoto’s spirit;

3. We need to upgrade to 8MB blocks to solve the expansion problem;

These reasons may sound reasonable and can be used to fool some fools and speculators, but they are totally unreasonable if analyzed in depth. Because:

1. Not supporting Segregated 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 Network, such as faster speed and lower transaction fees. Don't accuse BlockStream of making a fortune through Lightning Network, because you can also do business with Lightning Network. Lightning Network itself is just a better and more advanced technology;

2. Satoshi Nakamoto never thought of this, and he doesn't need you to inherit anything;

3. 8MB cannot solve the BTC expansion problem, because you are just BCC, not BTC. The BCC network itself does not have too much transaction volume and does not need to be expanded;

If everyone can be more honest and explain the logic of their forks more clearly, the fork logic of BCC can be written like this:

1. I want to create a coin that I can control, I want to train my own development team, and get rid of those annoying core developers;

2. I want to take this opportunity to publicize and promote my viabtc exchange;

3. I want to blow a bubble to attract more investors and speculators to rush in, so that I can make a fortune.

As a miner, you are just a part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, but now through the fork, you can upgrade from an athlete to a referee. Why not? In the near future, miners will say: I will modify the algorithm to make my mining more efficient!

Let’s stop criticizing BCC, after all, it is still an orthodox fork chain. On October 25, another miner stood up and said, we want to make Bitcoin more decentralized, we want to resist ASIC mining, we want to use the Equihash algorithm to replace SHA265, and we want Bitcoin to only be mined by GPUs!

Of course, he didn’t say the most important sentence, which is that because I can’t beat Bitmain in ASIC, I just happen to have a bunch of GPU mining machines, hehe!

Not to mention the evil deeds of pre-mining, etc., so Bitcoin Gold (BTG) appeared. I am too lazy to talk about this, because there will be many Bitcoin Silver and Bitcoin Brass Chains in the future, just treat them as a joke.

Then, the joke is not funny at all. Constant and unscrupulous forks are eroding people's trust in Bitcoin (especially those who understand Bitcoin, except fools and speculators), and one day this trust will collapse.

Things are not over yet, a bigger crisis is coming. Miners will conduct a 2X fork in mid-November, which is the biggest split and the most important struggle between miners (or BU, of course it does not mean that there are no disagreements among miners, but the miners representing the main force) and core.

The miners have a very good reason for this fork. Core openly tore up the New York Consensus without any contractual spirit. How can they go back on their word when they agreed to double the block size within 6 months after activating the segregated witness? Core said that 1M is enough, because after activating the segregated witness, the actual maximum block size has reached 4M, and the segregated witness has a 70% expansion effect, and the performance problem is expected to be solved after activating the lightning network. Moreover, if the block size is increased to 2M, it means that the maximum block size will reach 8M, which may cause many difficult to solve problems, so it is not supported!

Core is not ready to give in this time. BU has no way to retreat either. This is not only a matter of face, but also a matter of economic interests and the right to speak. Core has more user supporters, core code and technology, while BU has an absolute majority of computing power. This is a fight of equal strength. Therefore, the collision between Mars and the Earth is about to take place, and who wins and who loses can only be determined by the market!

However, no matter who wins or loses, in fact, everyone has already lost, and Bitcoin has also lost! When the total amount of Bitcoin is no longer capped at 21 million, it has already lost! Those forkers who claim to be the spiritual successors of Satoshi Nakamoto are not afraid that Satoshi Nakamoto will crawl out from somewhere and question you, why dare to openly destroy the spirit of Satoshi Nakamoto: the upper limit of Bitcoin is 21 million!

Then the rising price of the currency covered up these crises, making people mistakenly believe that the fork can no longer stop the pace of Bitcoin. The continuous rise in the price of Bitcoin is due to the factors of value return, the turbulence of international political situation (such as the Catalan independence incident), the mainstream futures market joining the Bitcoin variety (giving people the illusion that Bitcoin may be legalized), and many newcomers who know Bitcoin through various events have established an infinite love for Bitcoin. For them, it is too late to accept these crises because they are still immersed in the excitement of discovering such a wealth continent as Bitcoin.

The prosperity of the currency price cannot eliminate the crisis. This article does not intend to predict the price of Bitcoin, nor does it intend to indicate the risk of a sharp drop. Looking at the entire future, we need to think more broadly. Digital currency is a great initiative, and it will succeed. But we cannot say that Bitcoin is a great initiative, and it will succeed.

The bifurcation of Bitcoin exposed the shortcomings of its consensus mechanism PoW. In particular, PoW, which cannot resist ASIC mining, has a major hidden danger. This has led to an increasing number of new cryptocurrencies using its alternative: PoS.

With the continuous forking of Bitcoin and each major technological transformation, Bitcoin has become less and less like the Bitcoin of the past. One day, it will be difficult for you to tell which of your coins is the real Bitcoin. Bitcoin is more like a synonym, a representative of an era, and a spirit of pursuit of freedom and utopian ideals in everyone's heart.