Hard bifurcation of digital currency

2.

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 bifurcation

the 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 derived

He 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 bifurcate

this 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

3.

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

4.

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 bifurcation

soft 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

5.

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 bifurcation

6. The hard bifurcations of bitcoin in November are segwit2x, which makes bitcoin expand to 2MB. BCC is a new type of blockchain asset proced by a hard bifurcation of bitcoin. It is a decentralized digital currency supported by a large community of supporters. BCC removes segwit, cancels the limitation of 1m block size, supports 8m block size at most, and adheres to the expansion route on the chain. The purpose is to better realize the "point-to-point encrypted e-cash system" described in Nakamoto's white paper.

7. 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 bifurcation occurs.

8. Hard bifurcation is caused by the unacceptable permanent divergence of blockchain, while soft bifurcation is caused by the acceptable divergence of blockchain. The emergence of hard bifurcations means the emergence of a blockchain that cannot accept the new consensus mechanism. This blockchain is equivalent to the old version of the system, while the new version accepts the new consensus mechanism. Although the two versions are not different, they are still interrelated. The block nodes caused by soft bifurcation are compatible with the new consensus mechanism, and will not form another block chain. Hard and soft bifurcations are common in coin circles. In addition to currency speculation, blockchain can be applied in many places, including medical care, insurance, ecation, food, etc. I know a company specializing in blockchain development, Xuanling technology. Their evaluation in the instry is not bad.

9. Okex will support BCH hard bifurcations and will take a snapshot at the UNIX timestamp of 1542300000 (i.e., 00:40 Hong Kong time, November 16, 2018)< Br > okex will suspend BCH's charging service at 19:00 (HKT) on November 15, 2018. After the completion of the hard fork, depending on the stability of the main network, the full recovery will be resumed, and the specific time will be subject to the announcement later< Okex will take a snapshot from 00:35 on November 16, 2018 to 00:40 on November 16, 2018 (HKT). Due to the large number of BCH users, the snapshot will last for 5 minutes< Br > 2. The scope of snapshot includes: wallet account, legal currency account, currency account, contract account and leverage account; The legal currency account will be snapshot based on the available BCH number of the account, the cash, leverage and wallet account will be snapshot based on the BCH number of the account, and the contract account will be snapshot based on the user's BCH account equity (account equity = account balance + realized profit and loss + unrealized profit and loss)< Br > 3. If a leverage user has borrowed but not returned bchs, the amount of outstanding bchs will be dected based on the total amount of bchs in his account when taking a snapshot (for example, if a user has borrowed but not returned 100 bchs, and there are m bchs in his account when taking a snapshot, the number of bchs in his account is M-100, and if it is less than 0, it will be counted as 0) < br > 4. Among the above accounts, bchs less than 0.001 will not be included in the snapshot data, The quantity of the suspended order is recorded into the snapshot data< Br > okex has been fully prepared for this bifurcation. You don't need to worry about the safety of your BCH assets. Okex will continue to provide you with better procts and services! If you need more details, you can click the upper right corner to turn to manual.