The competition between Ethereum and Bitcoin from an evolutionary perspective

Chapter 0 Introduction

How to design a product that can be sold? This is a question I have to think about when doing any project in mechanical design. The simplest answer is: this thing has to be useful.

This answer comes from evolutionary thinking.

So how do we design a blockchain product that can survive? The theory of evolution can provide some ideas.

Chapter 1 Why We Didn't Evolve to Speak Using Electromagnetic Waves

(The quote here is a passage from Huaisha's Storytelling.)

In "The Three-Body Problem", the Trisolarans use electromagnetic waves to communicate, while we humans use sound waves. Undoubtedly, electromagnetic waves are much more advanced, with faster speeds, longer propagation distances, no need for transmission media, and accurate information. We humans have not evolved organs that emit electromagnetic waves, but we have invented a large number of tools that use electromagnetic waves to transmit information, such as mobile phones. This also shows that electromagnetic waves are far better than sound waves. But why haven't we humans evolved such an amazing organ, but instead evolved a mouth with inferior functions to speak?

The theory of evolution explains it this way: an organ must be useful on the first day it evolves, otherwise it will not survive.

In the long history of evolution, the human mouth was not used for speaking at first. It was used for hunting, eating and attacking. Like many animals today, it has no communication function. The human mouth was preserved by nature because it is useful, and then the vocal cords were developed through the superposition of functions, and we use our mouths to communicate.

If we grow an electromagnetic wave transmitter through gene mutation, can it be useful? Maxwell, who discovered the electromagnetic phenomenon, told reporters at the beginning: "Electromagnetic waves have no practical use, they are just used to perform some fun things." Useless things will be ruthlessly cut off by nature with the scissors of evolution. Very few useless organs will be left.

Even if something is useless at first, but becomes very useful later under other circumstances, it cannot escape the scissors of nature. Just like the electromagnetic wave transmitter, it is so useful that without it, we humans would be like returning to the Stone Age. But who said it was useless at first? It had to wait until the electromagnetic wave receiver, electromagnetic wave decoder, etc. appeared before it became useful.

Chapter 2 Products in a commercial society must first be useful

Nature will not allow something that is useless at the beginning to survive. The business world will also not allow something that is useless at the beginning to successfully realize its commercial value. Even if this thing is invented and eventually becomes a very good thing through functional iteration, it will basically not survive if it is not used on the first day.

If a product has a great future concept but has no value now or in the foreseeable future, and cannot make money for the boss, then it is a rootless grass that cannot survive in the competition.

For example, the door-to-door car wash and door-to-door massage services in the O2O market in recent years have a good concept. But in fact, they are useless. No one will order a girl to come to their home for a massage on their mobile phone. Soon, the money is gone and they will be gone.

Almost all commercial products in the world follow the idea of ​​evolution. They are designed for a certain purpose at the beginning, and then become a great product through continuous iteration and superposition of functions. For example, WeChat was invented for chatting at the beginning, and now it has evolved into an extremely powerful platform.

Take Google Glass for example. How cool is it? When it first came out, I was very interested in it. But later developments proved that it was useless, just a cool product, and ultimately became a failed business case.

Chapter 3 Bitcoin survives because it was useful from the beginning

The reason why Bitcoin has survived and is still doing well today is because it solves problems. Bitcoin mainly solves two problems: the first is the double-spending problem of electronic currency. The second is to improve the efficiency of currency transfer.

It is these two useful things that have allowed Bitcoin to grow slowly and attracted more and more people to participate. Slowly, Bitcoin has also been upgraded with its functions to become a blockchain product with increasingly powerful functions.

So from an evolutionary perspective, Bitcoin has reasons to survive and continue to grow.

Most other blockchain products, such as altcoins, either duplicate the use of Bitcoin or are pseudo-demands. For example, Litecoin is essentially a copy of Bitcoin, and it has not yet solved the problem of survival. Its computing power is still very small, and its economic ecology is also very poor. This is even more true for other altcoins.

If we analyze altcoins from an evolutionary perspective, they may be cut off by the cruel scissors of nature.

Chapter 4: What Problem Does Ethereum Solve?

Ethereum has been very strong this year, although some problems have occurred recently. But the price of Ethereum is still strong, Ethereum nodes even exceed Bitcoin, and the computing power is also very high. What is even more commendable is that Ethereum's economic ecosystem seems to be getting better and better. It should be difficult for rational people to ignore it.

From the perspective of evolution, what problem does it solve? What is its use? Can it escape the scissors of nature?

The Ethereum white paper is indeed complicated. I read it for a long time and only understood it roughly. The purpose of Ethereum is to build a platform for users to build blockchain products on it. This concept is very similar to an operating system, that is, Microsoft and others develop operating systems, such as Windows, on which users can build various application software. If there is no such operating system, then your application software will have to find a way to communicate directly with the CPU and other hardware, which is too difficult. Basically, few people can do it.

Ethereum says that it is too difficult for ordinary people to design a blockchain product and directly deal with proof of work, timestamps, consensus, etc. How about this, I will design all the underlying things for you, and then you can just work on it.

Whether Ethereum is useful or not depends on whether someone needs to build blockchain products.

The answer is of course yes. But the question is, will blockchain products be built on Ethereum? Or is Ethereum a good platform?

The evolutionary theory is that more complex functions must be auxiliary functions of some organs that were useful from the beginning . For example, the function of speaking is an auxiliary function of the mouth. Or it can be said that it is a function that "grew" out of the mouth.

So will more complex blockchain functions grow on Ethereum or on Bitcoin?

Chapter 4 Blockchain concept products are more promising if they grow from Bitcoin

Jeff Garzik, former Bitcoin Core wallet developer and current Bloq CEO, had the following to say:

"There are four stages of blockchain development. The first stage is digital currency, such as Bitcoin. The second stage is digital assets, which are being studied by financial institutions to make modern money transfers more efficient. The third stage is smart property, where assets such as airplanes, ships or real estate can be put on the blockchain. The fourth stage is smart contracts..."

Jeff's statement is more evolutionary, that is, the development of blockchain also started from useful functions and then gradually developed into more complex auxiliary functions.

The development of Ethereum hopes to skip directly the most useful function at the beginning - digital currency, and design some more useful and more complex products.

If the theory of evolution is effective in the development of blockchain, more complex blockchain functions should be based on basic functions, that is, digital assets, smart property, and smart contracts of blockchain will all grow on Bitcoin. This is more in line with the idea of ​​evolution.

(It should be emphasized here that this article is inspired by evolutionary thinking and is a speculation on the development of blockchain.)

Chapter 5 Conclusion

If the theory of evolution is effective in the development of blockchain, more complex blockchain functions should be based on basic functions, that is, blockchain's digital assets, smart property, and smart contracts will all grow on Bitcoin.