Blockchain forks

The Ethereum flag is fluttering, and DAO also has thieves eating away at the dike.

Vitalik has the will but not the power, and the road ahead will be long and difficult.

The above four lines of poetry are about the recent fork of Ethereum, a new upstart in the blockchain field. Since Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin in 2008, many people have been inspired by Bitcoin and tried to promote blockchain technology and make it do more things. Among them is this young man:

Born in Moscow, raised in Canada,
He can speak Chinese in three months and has an IQ of 180.
When you advance, you can be an orator; when you retreat, you can be a coder.
The founder of Ethereum, the child prodigy is him.

This young man is called Vitalik Buterin, or simply called Little V. Although he is called Little V, he is a big V in the blockchain industry. In the summer of 2015, the Ethereum (ETH) team raised more than 30,000 bitcoins for development. It is said that it is so easy to raise money in the cryptocurrency circle, which has also stimulated a large number of people to start ICOs for every project, and this trend has been popular until now. This matter has nothing to do with the topic we are going to talk about today, so we will stop here.

Just talking about Ethereum, it lived up to expectations after its release. The price of Ethereum rose from a few yuan to more than 100 yuan, which made many leeks change their beliefs. Someone asked, what is Ethereum, is it the same as Bitcoin? According to the Ethereum team, Ethereum is a decentralized development platform where everyone can code their own applications, smart contracts, etc., and Ethereum is the essential fuel (gas) for the operation of this system. Someone said that this storyteller does not speak human language and should be beaten. Hey, so you understand it as any kind of gold coin in the game, or any kind of digital currency. Although there are mistakes, there are not many mistakes from the perspective of transactions.

Since Ethereum is a decentralized development platform, some people have written their own contracts and promoted their own projects on it. Among them, there is a crowdfunding project called DAO, which attracted a large number of investors (leeks) to participate, and they poured Ethereum into it. As of June 2016, the funds raised exceeded 160 million US dollars. It is said to have become the largest crowdfunding project in history. Later, in short, a hacker discovered a loophole in DAO and used this loophole to steal Ethereum worth tens of millions of dollars. The so-called DAO was also stolen, referring to this incident.

This caused a stir. Some people supported the development team to roll back the block, saying that if such obvious thefts were not corrected, would the blockchain world allow robbers to run rampant? Some people opposed interference, saying that code is law, and that the DAO vulnerability was not a vulnerability in Ethereum itself, and that immutability was the greatest value of the blockchain.

After some operations, Ethereum implemented a fork on July 20, 2016. However, as expected by everyone, the branch that opposed the fork did not become a dead chain as expected, but survived and called itself Ethereum Classic (ETC). At present, the price of Ethereum ETH is stable at 80 to 90 yuan, which is a big drop from before; the price of ETC remains at 8 to 9 yuan. ETC has fans, computing power, and exchanges, so there are all kinds of speculations and conspiracy theories, forcing Xiao V to stand up and say: "I am 100% not playing both sides."

However, this is useless. Ethereum has split into two snakes, which is an irreversible fact. Maybe it is time to go back to the past.

The above is a story about Ethereum having a fork. Now let me tell you a story about Bitcoin not having a fork.

The storyteller has dug a hole for himself here. It is easy to tell stories about “yes”, but where do you start to tell stories about “no”?

I can only reluctantly say some crazy words:

Bitcoin is the leader of digital currencies and the ancestor of blockchain. After several years of being in the wild since its creation, it has finally become an existence that cannot be ignored by the whole world. The price has also increased from 10,000 coins a few years ago to 600 dollars a coin today. Bitcoin has countless fans all over the world and in our Qing Dynasty. Some people hold tens of thousands of coins and are called the richest; some people always claim to have faith and look up at the stars. There are too many people who like Bitcoin. Some call themselves the gods, and some call themselves leeks. It is impossible to generalize what they like. Even the storyteller dare not make the assertion that the world is bustling for profit. This currency circle has always been noisy, and there is almost no topic that everyone does not quarrel about.

But there is a voice that seems to dominate the mainstream. We often hear such statements: "The Bitcoin system has been running smoothly for more than 7 years, demonstrating strong stability and no forks. The development of Bitcoin is inseparable from the consensus of the community. Forks will cause serious damage to the community and the development of Bitcoin..." In summary, it is nothing more than: not forking is awesome, not forking is important, and the community should do its utmost to avoid forks.

To be honest, as a storyteller with a bit of mental schizophrenia, I would shamelessly say this on some occasions. But I know that a large part of people who say this are fools who use their own confusion to make others see clearly. They neither understand consensus nor forks. They think that Bitcoin has a strong consensus mechanism, so people in the Bitcoin community will also have a strong consensus mechanism; they think that Bitcoin can allow strangers to reach a unique consensus on the status of a transaction, so strangers in the Bitcoin community can also reach a unique consensus on the development of Bitcoin. Naïve, my brain is broken. The myth about consensus is not the focus of this article, so I will not discuss it here.

Let’s talk about the fork story.

There is a legend that Bitcoin has never forked. This is probably true. In the past few years of development, if you say that Bitcoin has ever been close to forking, it would be alarmist. But there have been a few times when it was said that there was a small crisis, which is true.

The first one was in March 2013, when the Bitcoin Core development team released a buggy version 0.8. There was a conflict between the old and new versions, and Bitcoin forked for more than 20 blocks. Then, everyone tacitly returned to 0.7. Bitcoin did not fork.

Second, in early 2014, the hashrate of the Bitcoin mining pool Ghash.io was approaching 50%, which theoretically meant that G pool would have the ability to attack the system. Then G pool said it did not want the hashrate to continue to rise, and miners voluntarily withdrew. The system was safe, so there was no fork.

Third, in July 2015, several domestic mining pools mined five low-version blocks in succession, which were not recognized by foreign mining pools. This almost caused a de facto fork, and then they collectively gave up these blocks. Bitcoin still did not fork.

Bitcoin has indeed never forked. But if you say that this is because the magic of the system makes everyone take the overall situation of not forking as the highest principle, the storyteller still thinks, pardon?

You can't escape the fifteenth day if you don't fork. According to the storyteller, there will be no solution to the expansion problem.

What is the expansion? We need to trace the source:

Bitcoin is decentralized and open source. But software does not come out of thin air, and the system does not automatically update. Satoshi Nakamoto has disappeared, so how is the update of Bitcoin software version completed? The storyteller will give you a brief introduction: Satoshi Nakamoto opened the source code and created Bitcoin. At this time, Satoshi Nakamoto had the power to write the code, which was the first generation; the leader disappeared and passed the throne to Gavin (Gavin Andresen), which was the second generation; Gavin did not want to take on the heavy responsibility alone, so he found a few people to join the cabinet and become prime ministers. This is the Bitcoin Core team, which is already the third generation. Although Core is the closest to the official existence in this unofficial system, many translators directly translate Core people into Bitcoin core developers, which still makes many Chinese readers misunderstand the meaning. Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, and where there are rivers and lakes, there are struggles. The story of Gavin being forced to resign as the prime minister later has little to do with this article, so we will not discuss it. Just talking about Bitcoin, people often talk about Bitcoin God, Wenchengwude, thousands of years, and unifying the rivers and lakes. But it is easy to follow the climax, but it is difficult to do something practical. Let’s not talk about the distant past. The long and tedious expansion dispute is an example. The current Bitcoin system can only process 3 transactions per second. This number has been reached. If we want to continue to develop, we have to find a way to upgrade. How to upgrade? Core has its own plan, Gavin has his own plan, miners have their own position, and users don’t have their own trumpet. Talk and talk, but we can’t reach an agreement. Meeting and meeting, it’s useless. Some developers organized new teams, called Classic, XT, and Unlimited. The temple is small, but the demons are strong, and no one is willing to submit to anyone. I feel that my body has been hollowed out.

It's like, Tongfu Inn entertained 3 guests, and there was no more room. The inn wanted to develop, and the shopkeeper Tong said, we should buy the noodle shop opposite; Lu Xiucai said, we can also build a partition between the guest rooms; Bai Zhantang said, let the guests who bid high stay, and those who can't afford the price go to the youth hostel. So the quarrels continued, and for ten years, there was no sequel to "Wulin Wai Zhuan".

When I give presentations to people outside the community, whenever someone asks me what I think about capacity expansion, whether I support Core or Classic, and how to solve the capacity expansion problem, almost all the guests will say that the community cannot be divided, and the solution to the capacity expansion problem depends on the consensus of the community, blah blah. Shit! Shame!

Before the Ethereum fork, many people were fed up with the long-winded nagging and thought, "The Core developers are so arrogant. If there is a real fork, should I support Core or Classic?" Then, Ethereum forked. On the one hand, the price of ETH fell sharply, and on the other hand, ETC was injured but not dead. Ethereum was truly split. People in the Bitcoin community were afraid that Bitcoin would also fork and their assets would be discounted. On the one hand, they laughed at Ethereum, on the other hand, they were secretly glad, and on the other hand, they dared not say a word to the arrogant Core. Everyone buried their heads in the sand, as if the crisis did not exist.

The above is the story of Bitcoin not forking.

After finishing the above two paragraphs, the storyteller would like to talk about competing coins.

Ladies and Gentlemen, stop and think about this for a moment, what are altcoins essentially?

Since the birth of Bitcoin, there have been hundreds of experiments imitating Bitcoin, innovating blockchains, and experimenting with new consensus mechanisms. But people in the cryptocurrency circle have never been afraid. They always demonstrate the various advantages of Bitcoin, look back at the lead, and then continue to drink and eat barbecue.

I would say that altcoins are essentially hard forks of Bitcoin. Does that sound new?

Bitcoin realizes a decentralized value transfer. In this respect, there is no fundamental difference between altcoins and Bitcoin. However, they are called by different names simply because they are different. Whether it is as simple as the different block time, or the different consensus mechanism, or the different positioning that the system has to bear. In the end, they are different.

People in the cryptocurrency circle are never afraid of competing coins, but they are very afraid of Bitcoin forks. The reason is not complicated. Competitive coins will not directly affect the price of Bitcoin, so they are not worried. This story of the tortoise and the hare is not the topic of today, so let's not talk about it. However, the fork of Bitcoin is bound to bring huge fluctuations to the price of Bitcoin. Ethereum is a good example, which is the most obvious expectation. So they are worried and keep saying no. A new thing, not even ten years of history, is learning from your country to maintain stability. This makes the storyteller feel very disappointed!

The Bitcoin community has grown, and people have different pursuits, different obsessions, and different expectations for Bitcoin. They are forced together to share the same bed but different dreams. This is what is meant by "going in opposite directions" and "seeking fish in a tree". Storytellers have never seen an open source community without forks. Only when there are forks can there be choices, and only when there are choices can there be a market economy.

"Bitcoin is a currency system, which is fundamentally different from general open source communities. If it is forked, it will fail" - what kind of brain circuit is this? Even the blockchain is implicitly forking into a currency circle and a chain circle. Decentralization is to give everyone the freedom to choose, please don't get it wrong. The result is never the highest value.

As the saying goes:

The East Palace split up and broke up, and the West Palace courtyard had a high gatehouse.
Big red lanterns are hung high, and the courtyard is filled with undercurrents.
Ethereum bifurcation is not a laughing stock, but calling oneself first-class is shameful.
What is decentralization? The love of my life is freedom.

Ps: 1. The starting point of writing this article is that people inside and outside the circle can read it, but I am afraid this goal has not been achieved; 2. The article involves several topics that can only be briefly mentioned. It seems that I need to be more diligent and write more in the future.