BTC bifurcation good or bad
About bitcoin, the news is flying all over the world these two days
specifically, a foundation called BTN foundation announced that it has set up a bitcoin bifurcated development team to launch a new bitcoin bifurcated BTN. Now its official website is online, which is called btn.kim. Two days later, bitgo, another bitcoin development team, announced that it would fork out from bitcoin. Its name is BTF, which literally means "bitcoin faith"
according to Yao yuan, a well-known bitcoin columnist, bitcoin will "have 10 children" in December, and will at least bifurcate out of 10 "children" such as BCX, SBTC and LBTC
as soon as these things happened, the bitcoin market began to fluctuate again, some investors blew up, and all kinds of rumors came out: why so many forks? Is bitcoin out of order
in fact, the bifurcating of bitcoin is far more complicated than what it shows. If we don't explain its historical background clearly, we really can't understand what happened
< b > the origin of bifurcations: the origin of the bifurcations of bitcoin has existed. The so-called bifurcations refer to the accounting differences caused by different underlying protocols. According to Xue Hongyan, director of the Internet financial center of Suning Financial Research Institute, bitcoin is jointly maintained by a number of point-to-point decentralized nodes. The orderly operation of the whole system depends on the consensus of all nodes, that is, there is a set of recognized standards for key issues such as which transactions are acceptable and which nodes have accounting rights. This set of standards is deployed in the underlying protocol of blockchain and implemented automatically
but nodes are operated by people after all, which is the so-called "miner", but everything operated by people will be different. For example, the miners of some nodes go online every day, while the miners of some nodes go online occasionally; Some nodes are in the eastern hemisphere, some nodes are in the Western Hemisphere... In a word, e to various reasons, over time, bitcoin has different underlying protocols in different nodes
if different versions of underlying protocols are running in a node, different standards will appear, which will result in bifurcation. If the nodes can deal with these version differences and finally form a unified standard, the bifurcation will eventually disappear, which is called soft bifurcation. If the difference cannot be eliminated, when some nodes continue to run different versions of the protocol, the bifurcation will continue, which is called hard bifurcation
it's easy to solve the problem of soft bifurcation, that is, if the account book is wrong, just modify it. Hard bifurcations are not easy to solve. No one thinks he is wrong and explains them according to his own standards. In the end, he can only go his own way and keep his own account. At present, bitcoin bifurcation refers to hard bifurcation
< b > the first bifurcations: the first hard bifurcations of bitcoin technology upgrade are purely technical reasons. The settlement performance of bitcoin itself is limited. According to the original technical agreement, bitcoin can only support up to seven settlements per second. This was not a problem in the early days. With the fire of bitcoin, more and more people flocked in, and the settlement became more frequent than ever. At this time, the original technology was not enough
therefore, in the middle of 2017, some miners proposed new technology agreements, but the other miners did not agree with them. Eventually, both sides held one end and ran their own underlying agreements, which was the first bifurcation in the history of bitcoin
However, with the development of bitcoin trading means, speculators graally regard the bifurcation as a means of money collection, which leads to a great change in the nature of the current bifurcationthe principle is that each bifurcation is essentially equivalent to the issue of a new digital currency, which is linked to bitcoin. The target audience is larger than the general ICO, and it is easier to be accepted by ordinary users than issuing a new digital currency directly
because the team that creates this kind of bifurcation takes the lead, it is very easy to control the transaction of the new currency, especially in the early stage, and it only needs a small cost to control the price trend of the whole currency. This leaves a lot of room for speculation. The forked team only needs to make the new currency accepted by the users, and then it can artificially raise the price to a sky high price. After the real users come in, they can sell all the money they hoard, and get high profits out of thin air
on October 25 this year, a domestic team forked out bitcoin gold (BTG). Two days before the forking, Jiang Zhuoer, CEO of leibitchi, denounced the forking as money looping: "Liao Xiang, founder of BTG, had g 200000 BTG coins in advance before the forking, and wanted to convert them into 20000 bitcoins, looping 80 million yuan."
The advantage of bifurcations can be seen, so that the word "bifurcations create value" has become popular in the field of currency speculation. For this reason, a new word "IFO" - first token issue has been derivedHe Sheng, a well-known financial blogger, once told the media that most of the so-called IFO may evolve into the operation of collecting money by harvesting leeks. "Many previous ICOS are doing IFO, and ICO needs to write a white paper and go to the stock exchange to gain market recognition, while IFO does not even need to write a white paper."
this also explains why bitcoin is becoming more and more profitable. To put it bluntly, everyone wants Nakamoto
Can< b > not bifurcate
whether it's Hong shuning of Suning finance, or Mike & Chen, CEO of bitgo, a bitcoin wallet software provider and one of the project leaders of segwit2x; Mike belshe, the instry actually refuses this bifurcation of bitcoin. In fact, real blockchain practitioners have always hated speculation. At present, the leading enterprises in the domestic blockchain instry have clearly expressed their opposition to the overflow of bitcoin bifurcation. For example, when Xunlei launched the first popular blockchain project in China, its CEO Chen Lei said in an interview: "Xunlei opposes all speculative activities using blockchain, so it is definitely against bitcoin for the purpose of speculation and leek cutting arbitrage."
However, to solve this problem, it is not enough to have an attitude alone, but to have specific means. The best way is not to let bitcoin bifurcatethis is difficult to achieve. Bitcoin's own technology is a relatively primitive blockchain technology with limited computing power. It can barely cope with the previous transaction scale. In view of the current situation of bitcoin fire, it is difficult to support. So sooner or later bitcoin will have to solve the problem of its own computing power
but there is no hope at all. With the innovation of blockchain technology, there will always be some new ways. For example, the shared computing proposed by Xunlei can effectively improve the total amount of computing power and rece the cost per unit of computing power without changing the existing hardware facilities. If bitcoin is combined with shared computing, it can effectively solve the problem of bitcoin's computing power limit without new bifurcation
secondly, the bifurcations for the purpose of cutting Chinese chives can be supervised by means of supervision. For example, compared with the real name system of special currency wallet, the real name system of transactions can effectively prevent the risk of Financial Bureau. At present, the real name system has been implemented in some blockchain projects, and has achieved good results. For example, Xunlei's blockchain is the first blockchain application to introce the real name system in China, which basically eliminates the hidden danger of malicious speculation
in a word, there is a way. It depends on whether bitcoin players accept it or not, and there is a process to implement it. It takes time. Therefore, at this stage, it is better for us to stay away from the bifurcations of bitcoin in various names
Q: What is bitcoin bifurcation and why
A: the reason why bitcoin bifurcates is that the underlying technology of bitcoin is blockchain. Some people begin to think that bitcoin's block capacity is too small and there are always congestion. So they ask for bitcoin's upgrade and expansion. Some people think that bitcoin's function is too single and its future development is not optimistic, So these people ask bitcoin to have the function of building DAPP (decentralized application), and some support it, while others oppose it. This kind of divergence can be understood as the bifurcation of bitcoin
Q: the classification of bitcoin bifurcation
A: there are two kinds of bifurcations of bitcoin, one is soft bifurcations, the other is hard bifurcations, so what is soft bifurcations
Q: the formation principle of soft bifurcation
A: soft fork refers to optimizing and modifying bugs in the original bitcoin network to improve the capacity of the block, such as 2m, 4m or 8m, 16m. The segwit lightning network is the mainstream solution, which is equivalent to a traffic jam on the main road, and the development team will build an auxiliary road to help the main road to divert congestion
this is a mild solution, which can make the original bitcoin network compatible with the network after soft bifurcation, and the main transaction of bitcoin is still on the main chain
Q: disadvantages of soft bifurcation
A: of course, there are disadvantages of soft bifurcation, that is, it can only solve the temporary congestion problem, and after the implementation of soft bifurcation, it can only keep the network unobstructed for a few years. In the future, it needs continuous expansion, which has an impact on the stability of the system
Q: what is hard bifurcation and its formation principle
A: another solution is hard fork, which means to upgrade the bitcoin system again, change the height of the block completely in the form of code, and take bitcoin unlimited as the mainstream solution. Generally speaking, it is equivalent to a traffic jam on the main road. We directly abandon this road and find a place to build a three-dimensional transportation hub on the ground and underground. All new cars use this transportation system, which changes the block size of the bitcoin network and optimizes the processing speed of the network
Q: what are the disadvantages of hard bifurcation
A: but hard bifurcations also have disadvantages, that is, they are not compatible with the original bitcoin system, which requires all people in the bitcoin network to support hard bifurcations. If some people do not support hard bifurcations, there will be two versions of bitcoin network, which will proce two bitcoins. The blockchains of the two bitcoins form a competitive relationship, This kind of internal friction will lead to greater price volatility and uncertainty of bitcoin's future situation
Q: a classic case of bitcoin bifurcation
A: Eth and etc are typical cases of hard bifurcation. The Dao project is a crowdfunding project initiated by slock.it, a blockchain Internet of things company. It was officially released in May 2016. As of June of that year, the Dao project has raised more than $160 million. It wasn't long before the Dao project was targeted by hackers. Because of the huge loopholes in the smart contract, the Dao project was transferred to ether coin with a market value of 50 million US dollars
in order to recover the assets of many investors and stop the panic, vitalik buterin, the founder of Ethereum, finally proposed the idea of hard bifurcation, and finally completed the hard bifurcation in block 1920000 of Ethereum through a majority vote of the community, rolling back all the Ethereum coins occupied by hackers
even though Ethereum hard bifurcates into two chains, some people who believe in the tamper proof property of blockchain still stay on the original chain of Ethereum classic. Today, Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum classic (etc) are ranked in the top 20 in the global cryptocurrency market value, which is one of the reasons why they are regarded as classic cases in the field of hard bifurcations
Q: the difference and influence between soft bifurcation and hard bifurcation
A: for users, soft forking will not proce new bitcoin currency. They only need to understand the transaction mode and K-line characteristics of bitcoin. They only need a mainstream wallet of bitcoin
hard bifurcation will generate new currencies, and there may be more than one new currency. Once the core code of bitcoin is modified and the core code of bitcoin is reconstructed, there may be a second time for the first time, and btc1 and btc23456789 may all happen. Users will be confused. Which kind of coin would be better for me to trade? What kind of bitcoin do I use to pay for a large circulation range? In short, users with dyschooia will crash. Moreover, users need to download wallets of different hard bifurcated systems, which brings complex operation to save and pay bitcoin
however, correspondingly, the user's right to choose has also increased. You can choose the bitcoin code developed by the development team you like and trust. When the bifurcations of bitcoin are not clear, when the soft bifurcations start to activate and the computing power starts to vote, the best way for users to deal with it is to wait and see. Don't recharge and extract bitcoin in the process of bifurcation
in addition, soft fork will change the settlement mode of bitcoin all nodes, and some small settlement will be confirmed by the third party node, namely settlement channel. The settlement channel may incur part of the service charge. Similar to the role and business model of UnionPay
what is bitcoin bifurcation? The difference and influence of soft bifurcation and hard bifurcation
The capacity of a block in bitcoin is 1m (megabytes). A transaction is between 250 and 500 bytes
according to this algorithm, a block contains about 4194.3 transactions
the confirmation time of a block in bitcoin is 10 minutes, so the seven transactions that a block can process per second may sometimes be less than seven
What are the consequences The bifurcations of
bitcoin are divided into hard bifurcations and soft bifurcations
hard fork means that when the block format or transaction format of bitcoin changes, the UN upgraded nodes refuse to verify the blocks proced by the upgraded nodes
the upgraded nodes can verify the blocks proced by the non upgraded nodes, and they continue the chain they think is correct, so they are divided into two chains
What is soft bifurcationsoft bifurcation means that when the data structure of bitcoin transaction changes,
UN upgraded nodes can verify the blocks proced by upgraded nodes,
and upgraded nodes can also verify the blocks proced by UN upgraded nodes
In the discussion of blockchain, bitcoin and other digital currencies, we often hear the word "bifurcation". So what is bifurcation? What is the effect of bifurcation
blockchain
before talking about bifurcation, popularize a little knowledge of blockchain, so as to help us understand what bifurcation is more easily (if you don't have any concept of blockchain, please read my previous articles, which are all popular words to help you understand what blockchain is)
blockchain, as the name suggests, is a chain composed of blocks. Of course, this kind of chain is just a figurative metaphor. To put it bluntly, data blocks are connected orderly. In bitcoin, the transaction records of bitcoin are stored in the block. The size of the block and the space occupied by the transaction records determine how many transactions can be stored in a block. These transaction records are packaged into blocks, and then the blocks are connected one by one to form a blockchain
We know that bitcoin software, like other software, needs to be updated and modified regularly in order to make it better. So a new version will appear, but not everyone will download the new version, so one miner will run the old version, and some will run the new version. If the old and new versions are not compatible, the blockchain will bifurcate. Because there may be differences between the version blocks and the old version blocks, they cannot be connected to the same blockchain, so there will be two or even more chains, which is called bifurcation
soft forking
soft forking refers to that when the new consensus rules are released, nodes that have not been upgraded will proce illegal blocks because they do not know the new consensus rules, resulting in temporary forking. This kind of bifurcation will be graally repaired with the upgrading of nodes
hard fork
hard fork refers to the permanent divergence of the blockchain. After the release of the new consensus rules, some nodes that have not been upgraded cannot verify the blocks proced by the upgraded nodes, and usually hard fork occurs. Therefore, in the field of digital currency, hard bifurcation often leads to the emergence of new currencies. For example, the hard bifurcation of Ethereum led to the emergence of eth
What is bifurcation? What is bitcoin bifurcationbitcoin bifurcations are mainly divided into two types: hard bifurcations and soft bifurcations
the main supporters of hard bifurcations are China's bitcoin community, bitcoin Jesus, Gavin and other bigwigs. That is to say, the expansion faction insists on large blocks, does not expand the main chain, and nothing else. Hard bifurcation has the risk of splitting bitcoin, but once the main chain is split, it will kill the small chain coin
the main supporters of soft bifurcation are the core team and the BS company behind it. The main chain does not change and the functions of the main chain are distributed to the side chain. This will develop bitcoin into a better settlement system, but the main chain will be graally marginalized. Some people doubt that this is to kill bitcoin and benefit some companies.
section one: why do you split up when you don't say a word
the concept of bifurcation originated from bitcoin
as we know, bitcoin trading is based on bitcoin blockchain network (one block by one forms a chain of front and back Association, forming a bitcoin blockchain network). Since a block is a block, it must have capacity (let's fill in the block, it is nothing more than a collection of codes), The size of the block capacity will limit the efficiency of the transaction. If the block capacity is too small, the smaller the number of transactions will be. Once the transaction volume is too large, it will cause congestion
the capacity of bitcoin block is only 1m, and it can hold only 5-7 transactions. In the past, there were relatively few users for bitcoin transactions, so this capacity is no problem. However, with the rise of bitcoin price, more and more users swarmed in, and the bitcoin block could not accommodate so many transactions, resulting in congestion
bitcoin is anxious: slow down, brother Dei, I can't keep up with your trading speed. Hello! Users are also anxious: brother, can you hurry up
this is a big problem, not only because we have limited patience, but also because bitcoin's positioning is currency. As a currency, you should pay and collect money quickly, accurately and ruthlessly. If you are always so slow, when can you realize the currency attribute? So, this is a big problem
of course, the bitcoin community knows the importance of this problem. As for how to solve this problem, the bitcoin community is divided on whether to expand the capacity of bitcoin blocks (as we have just said, it is too little capacity of bitcoin blocks that leads to slow transaction speed and congestion)
the controversy is mainly divided into two camps:
the original development team of bitcoin, led by core, believes that bitcoin is an electronic gold of value storage, which will destroy its core once it is expanded
however, the mining team led by Wu Jihan believes that bitcoin should be a kind of currency with rapid circulation in the future, and it needs to be expanded to solve the problem of transaction congestion. Because of the decentralized nature of the blockchain, no indivial or organization can decide how to "expand" the bitcoin system. Everyone has their own opinions, and their opinions are divided. No one is willing to give in. Therefore, everyone goes their own way. The bitcoin chain has split into BTC and BCH chains, and over time it has evolved into the so-called "bifurcation"
this is the origin of bifurcation
what happens after the second section bifurcates
for blockchain, bifurcation is the change of blockchain protocol, which is similar to upgrading the blockchain to make up for the shortcomings of the system. This is just like our current mobile phone software often prompts you to upgrade
however, we know that blockchain is decentralized. Unlike your mobile software, developers can upgrade when they say so. In the world of blockchain, any modification needs the consensus of all members. No one can decide when to change or how to change the underlying agreement of blockchain
therefore, when the original development team of bitcoin and the miner team have differences, the system will be divided into two parts, and two new systems based on the original blockchain will appear. Everyone has their own problems, and no one can intervene. In this way, the bitcoin system is divided into two chains: BTC and BCH, which are called "bifurcations", and BCH is called bifurcated currency (the bifurcated currency of bitcoin)
in fact, not only BCH, but also bitcoin has many bifurcated coins. Why is BCH the first thing to think of when it comes to bifurcated currencies? This is because BCH is a successful bifurcated currency. When its market value is the highest, it ranks the fourth in the list of cryptocurrencies, next only to bitcoin, Ethereum and EOS
section 3 hard fork and soft fork
let's make a metaphor: if bitcoin system is the trunk of a big tree, then BCH and other fork coins are the branches of the tree. However, bifurcation is not as simple as this metaphor. It can be divided into hard bifurcation and soft bifurcation
first, hard bifurcation: goodbye, never see again
the BCH we mentioned above belongs to hard bifurcation. Hard bifurcation means that nodes using old software can no longer verify blocks proced with new software nodes. If you want to verify, you can only upgrade. After upgrading, it is equivalent to changing the track and running on another new system. Just like BCH to BTC, BCH is a brand new track (a brand new chain), and the coin on this chain is BCH (bitcoin cash). Then, nodes using BCH system can no longer go to BTC network for transaction verification. Hard bifurcations, generally speaking, mean going their own way. There is no intersection any more< Second, soft bifurcation: getting better to meet again
soft bifurcation is opposite to hard bifurcation. Soft bifurcation means that nodes using the old version can verify the blocks proced by nodes using the new version, and nodes using the new version can also verify the blocks proced by nodes using the old version. The two versions are compatible
the way bitcoin upgraded its isolation witness in 2017 is soft bifurcation. In the whole process, it doesn't matter whether we use the old version or the new version, because they are compatible. The new version only solves some problems better. In essence, we are still running on the bitcoin chain, and there is no new coin
to sum up, the difference between soft fork and hard fork is whether nodes using old software can be compatible with nodes using new software. Compatibility is soft fork, while incompatibility is hard fork.