Wu Jihan Ethereum
unlike all currencies, bitcoin does not rely on a specific currency institution to issue. It is generated by a large number of calculations based on a specific algorithm. Bitcoin economy uses a distributed database composed of many nodes in the whole P2P network to confirm and record all transactions, and uses cryptography design to ensure the security of all aspects of currency circulation. The decentralized nature and algorithm of P2P can ensure that it is impossible to artificially manipulate the value of bitcoin through mass proction. The design based on cryptography can make bitcoin only be transferred or paid by the real owner. This also ensures the anonymity of money ownership and circulation transactions. The biggest difference between bitcoin and other virtual currencies is that the total amount of bitcoin is very limited and it has a strong scarcity
on December 17, 2017, bitcoin reached an all-time high of $19850. On July 27, 2020, bitcoin broke through the $10000 mark again [2]<
Chinese name
bitcoin
foreign name
bitcoin
type
encrypted digital currency
circulation platform
Network
founder
Nakamoto Tsung
quick
navigation
founder generation principle currency characteristics currency trading legal status external evaluation
development process
what is the single bitcoin selected
01:07
from the transaction of things In 2008, the global financial crisis broke out. On November 1 of the same year, a person who called himself Satoshi Nakamoto published the white paper bitcoin: a peer-to-peer e-cash system [6] on the P2P foundation website, stating his new idea of e-money bitcoin came out. On January 3, 2009, bitcoin Genesis block was born
there are three bitcoins in total
compared with legal tender, bitcoin does not have a centralized issuer, but is generated by the calculation of network nodes. Anyone can participate in the manufacture of bitcoin, and it can circulate all over the world. It can be bought and sold on any computer connected to the Internet. No matter where they are, anyone can dig, buy, sell or receive bitcoin, And in the transaction process, foreigners can not identify the user's identity information. On January 5, 2009, bitcoin, which is not controlled by the central bank and any financial institutions, was born. Bitcoin is a kind of digital currency, which is composed of a series of complex codes generated by computer. The new bitcoin is made by preset program
whenever bitcoin comes into the view of mainstream media, mainstream media always ask some mainstream economists to analyze bitcoin. Earlier, these analyses always focused on whether bitcoin was a scam. Now the analysis is always focused on whether bitcoin can become the mainstream currency in the future. The focus of the debate is often on the deflationary nature of bitcoin[ 7]
many bitcoin players are attracted by the fact that bitcoin can not be added at will. Contrary to the attitude of bitcoin players, economists have a polarized attitude towards the fixed amount of 21 million bitcoin
Keynesian economists believe that the government should actively regulate the total amount of money, and use the tightness of monetary policy to timely fuel or brake the economy. As a result, they believe that bitcoin's fixed aggregate currency sacrifices its adjustability, and worse still, it will inevitably lead to deflation, thereby harming the overall economy. Austrian economists hold the opposite view. They think that the less the government intervenes in money, the better. The deflation caused by the fixed amount of money is not a big deal, even a sign of social progress
bitcoin network generates new bitcoin through "mining". In essence, the so-called "mining" is to use computers to solve a complex mathematical problem to ensure the consistency of bitcoin network distributed accounting system. Bitcoin network will automatically adjust the difficulty of mathematical problems, so that the whole network will get a qualified answer about every 10 minutes. Then bitcoin network will generate a certain amount of bitcoin as block reward to reward the person who gets the answer[ 6]
in 2009, when bitcoin was born, block rewards were 50 bitcoins. Ten minutes after its birth, the first 50 bitcoins were generated, and the total amount of money at this time is 50. Then bitcoin grew at a rate of about 50 every 10 minutes. When the total amount reaches 10.5 million (50% of 21 million), the block reward will be halved to 25. When the total amount reaches 15.75 million (5.25 million new output, i.e. 50% of 1050), the block reward will be further halved to 12.5. The monetary system used to have no more than 10.5 million in four years, after which the total number will be permanently limited to about 21 million[ 3]
bitcoin is a virtual currency with limited quantity, but it can be used to cash out: it can be converted into the currency of most countries. You can use bitcoin to buy some virtual items, such as clothes, hats, equipment, etc. in online games. As long as someone accepts it, you can also use bitcoin to buy real-life items
on February 25, 2014, the opening price of "bitcoin China" was 3562.41 yuan. By 4:40 p.m., the price had dropped to 3185 yuan, down more than 10%. According to the historical market data of the platform, on January 27, 2014, 1 bitcoin could be exchanged for 5032 yuan. This means that in less than a month on the platform, the price of bitcoin has dropped by 36.7%
on September 9 of the same year, the US e-commerce giant eBay announced that Braintree, its payment processing subsidiary, would start accepting bitcoin payments. The company has entered into a partnership with coinbase, a bitcoin trading platform, to begin to accept this relatively new means of payment
although the eBay market trading platform and paypal business do not accept bitcoin payment, Braintree customers such as airbnb, a travel house rental community, and Uber, a car rental service, will be able to start accepting this virtual currency. Braintree, whose main business is to provide payment processing software to enterprises, was acquired by eBay in 2013 for about $800 million
on the evening of January 22, 2017, fire coin, bitcoin China and okcoin announced on their respective official websites that in order to further curb speculation and prevent drastic price fluctuations, all platforms will start to collect transaction service fees from 12:00 noon on January 24, and the service fees will be charged at a fixed rate of 0.2% of the transaction amount, and the active transaction and passive transaction rates are the same[ 8] On May 5, according to the latest data of okcoin, the price of bitcoin has just set a new record, reaching a high of 9222 yuan by the time of publication. From 12:00 noon on January 24, China's three major bitcoin platforms officially began to collect transaction fees. On September 4, the central bank and other seven ministries and commissions announced that China banned virtual currency trading
on December 17 of the same year, bitcoin reached an all-time high of $19850
on November 25, 2018, bitcoin broke the $4000 mark and then stabilized at more than $3000[ 9] On November 19, cryptocurrency resumed its decline, and bitcoin fell to the $5000 mark for the first time since October 2017, e to BCH's hard bifurcations and the regulatory authorities' enhanced scrutiny of the initial token issue (ICO)[ 9] At 4:30 a.m. on November 21, the offer of bitcoin on the coinbase platform fell below $4100, a 13 month low
in April 2019, bitcoin broke the $5000 mark again, reaching a new high in the year[ 10] On May 12, bitcoin broke through $7000 for the first time in nearly eight months[ 11] On May 14, according to the offer of coin market cap, bitcoin stood at $8000, up 14.68% in 24 hours[ 12]
on June 22 of the same year, the price of bitcoin broke through the $10000 mark. Bitcoin prices fluctuated around 10200, rising nearly 7% in 24 hours[ 13] On June 26, the price of bitcoin broke through $12000, a 17 month high since January last year[ 14] In the morning of June 27, the price of bitcoin was close to $14000, reaching a new high of the year[ 15]
on February 10, 2020, bitcoin broke through $10000. According to trading data, bitcoin's price rose more than 3%, breaking the psychological limit of $10000 for the first time since October 26 last year[ 16]
on March 12, according to the data of bitstamp, the cryptocurrency trading platform, the lowest price of bitcoin dropped to US $5731 at 19:44[ 17]
on May 8, bitcoin broke through the $10000 mark, a new high since February[ 18]
from 8:00 a.m. on May 10, the unit price of bitcoin fell by thousands of dollars from $9500 in half an hour, with the lowest price falling below $8200 and the highest price difference exceeding $1400[ 19]
at 6 p.m. on July 26, bitcoin rose rapidly for a short time, reaching a maximum of 10150.15usdt, with a maximum increase of more than 4% within the day. This is the first time since June 2, 2020 that bitcoin has exceeded the $10000 level[ 2]
bitcoin has been "forked" more than 100 times in two years. How about those forked coins now
a financial book
like 67
reading 6113
it's easy to be attacked by hackers and ask for bitcoin! Network threat has been related to the life and death of enterprises<
heart of rock
Zan 18
reading 1886
I bet that bitcoin will never die out
entrepreneurial state
Zan 96
reading 15000
visiting bitcoin mine in Xinjiang
Huchou net
Zan 27
reading 4553
overseas mining rise: batch construction of us factories, On November 1, 2008, a self styled Satoshi Nakamoto published a bitcoin white paper, bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, on the P2P foundation website, stating his new idea of electronic money bitcoin came out
Wang yuexinyi, Professor of mathematics at Kyoto University, was born on January 3, 2009. Bitcoin uses distributed ledger to get rid of the constraints of third-party institutions, which Nakamoto calls "blockchain". Users are willing to dedicate the computing power of CPU and run a special software to be a "digger", which will form a network to maintain the "regional chain". In the process, they also generate new money. Business is also extended on this network. Computers running this software are scrambling to solve the problem of irreversible code, which contains several business data. The first miner to deal with the problem will get a 50 bitcoin reward, and the relevant trading area will join the chain. As the number of "miners" increases, the difficulty of each puzzle also increases, which keeps the proctivity of bitcoin in each trading area at about 10 minutes
in 2009, Nakamoto designed a digital currency, namely bitcoin. The booming bitcoin market has gone up and down, and the identity of its founder "Nakamoto" has always been a mystery. Rumors about "the father of bitcoin" involve from the US National Security Agency to financial experts, and also give bitcoin a mysterious aura
according to foreign media reports, computer scientist Ted Nelson released a video on the Internet on Sunday, saying that he has determined that the founder of bitcoin is Shinichi Mochizuki, a professor of mathematics at Kyoto University. The founders of bitcoin have always used
At the end of March this year, bitmainland launched an ant miner X3 based on ASIC, which is mainly aimed at Monroe coin (XmR) and cryptonight algorithm dependent cryptocurrency. Monroe coin immediately issued a counter statement that it will change the core algorithm to fight against the invasion of ASIC computing power
what would be the result if it appeared in the world of digital cryptocurrency? That is, the wrong calculation results may be brought into the whole network without being discovered
More importantly, if a "calculator manufacturer" monopolizes the calculator market, it can also deliberately proce this kind of calculator with errors to change the mathematical rulesafter all, the "calculation" in the field of crypto digital currency is not as simple as 1 + 2 + 3. You can't compare paper currency with special currency by hand
the practical significance of computing power monopoly in mainland China
we have learned about attacks based on 51% computing power in various articles
but the reality is that although the global power of 78% was in Chinese mainland, fortunately, they were scattered in different pools and controlled by different people. p>
although all POW based cryptocurrencies have the risk of being attacked by 51%, few people can really launch attacks e to the dispersion of computing power
but what if the miners themselves don't want to attack, but the mining machinery manufacturers attack
still using the analogy just now, although each miner subjectively wants to do the problem checking independently, their calculator is manipulated remotely and gives consistent wrong answers. This may pose a great threat to digital cryptocurrency
however, the manufacturer with the absolute voice of mining machinery had such a problem in mainland China
in April 2017, the back door of antbled came out. Although this is described as a "vulnerability" in Chinese, antbled is more like a function that has been implemented and designed
anonymous people found that after an ant miner made by bitmainland was connected to the network, it would communicate with a domain name held by bitmainland on a regular basis and return the miner's serial number, MAC address and IP address to bitmainland's server. If the server of bitcontinent gives a negative signal, the miner will stop running
although bitcontinental responded that they could not shut down any mining machines that did not belong to them. However, the bitcoin core team has proved in experiments that this function has no verification. Anyone can shut down mining machines by forging DNS - but it also means that bitcoin mainland has the ability to shut down any sold mining machines
After, bitcontinent fixed this "loophole", but it caused heated discussion in the community. This has also set the tone that almost all pow blockchain communities are biased against mainland China
a few months later, under the leadership of bitcontinent, viabtc g out the first block and made a hard bifurcation with the blockchain of bitcoin. From then on, bitcoin BCH (bitcoin cash) appeared in the world
will the monopoly of mining machinery destroy the distributed system
facing this problem, we should have a clear answer now. That is, the monopoly of mining machinery will certainly affect the safe operation of pow digital cryptocurrency
the problem is not whether bitcontinental and its founder Wu Jihan are trustworthy, but that one of the values of any blockchain system is to operate safely without trust in any single company or indivial
even if the ASIC miner is not monopolized by bitmainland, the ASIC miner itself will increase the concentration of computing power
the ASIC used for mining has great requirements for ventilation, power and site, and has no use except for mining. At the same time, the calculation difficulty of the whole network is increased e to the powerful computing power
as a result, it is very difficult for external players to start mining in the next software on the computer as they did five years ago. And the recent centralized exchange is caused by frequent black incidents, which also proves that concentration in this unregulated market will definitely lead to insecurity
assuming that the bitcoin network runs on top of one million miners, no one can shut it down. And if the bitcoin network runs on 20 large mines, it's much easier to shut it down
and by the end of 2017, 78% of the effort was concentrated in mainland China, which led to a real possibility of Chinese mainland regulators' launching a deadly attack against the special currency. p>
moreover, most of the scenarios of using digital cryptocurrency are related to "decentralization". Once centralized, it means that these scenarios no longer exist. It turns a project that might have value into a pure waste of computing power
Then, what measures should we take in the face of this situationfirst of all, as the project side, it may be time to give up the pure POW mechanism. In fact, in many projects of issuing cryptocurrency, especially in asset securitization projects. Similar to the concept of stock in the real world, POS itself is more reasonable than pow
in the media that don't know about blockchain, we often hear such words as "bitcoin wastes a lot of computing power and has no value", which is reasonable to some extent. It is difficult for a POW based blockchain to bind the value of the project itself to the issued digital cryptocurrency - because the real value behind the price of the currency does not come from the project, but from the cost of maintaining computing power
and the hybrid mode of pow + POS is more like the future. In the hybrid mode, both coin holders and miners can participate in the major decisions of this community. If a decision is widely accepted, the blockchain will be soft forked to the latest state without excessive intervention of developers, and there will be almost no private resistance of miners or mining machines
secondly, as a retail miner, if you are still digging a pure POW mechanism currency, you should unconditionally support the bifurcation activities initiated by the community to resist the ASIC mining machine, even if it will lead to the failure of your mining machine
this may sound contradictory, but in the long run, it is better to promote the reform of the community and get more benefits in a currency controlled by the monopoly of computing power. Because in many conflicts between computing power and community in the past, the ultimate result is that the computing power owner will forcibly keep the old algorithm to hard fork the blockchain
just like Eth and etc, the classic Ethereum (etc), which belongs to the computing power master, has lost the support of developers and become an air coin with no vitality and impossible to develop applications
as a retail leek, you should be careful to trade the non mainstream digital currencies (except bitcoin) supported by bitmainland mining machinery, so as to avoid falling into a blockchain in which bitmainland controls the computing power completely
finally, if you are bitcontinent, what should you do
bitcontinent's goal is to become Intel, AMD and NVIDIA, make greater contributions to the whole computer instry, and become a great company, not just entangled in the immediate interests of mining
Wall Street financiers have long seen through the violence brought about by NVIDIA's video card mining. The rise and fall of the company's stock price has been consistent with the price of bitcoin, and even affected by the digital currency market. Citron, a well-known short seller, has recently been bearish on NVIDIA, arguing that the company has focused too much on providing services for digital currency miners rather than on serious businesses such as artificial intelligence, games and driverless driving
the mission of chip manufacturers is to provide more powerful chips to drive more intelligent services, and finally contribute to the real world, rather than become monopoly tycoons in the virtual world. When we no longer enter the gate of the virtual world, the only thing left is a deserted land
in an interview with US media last year, Wu Jihan disclosed that he would make an IPO with a market value of billions of dollars. As a company about to go public, bitmainland should not only be responsible to investors, but also accept investors' questions about the sustainability of its business. "If your mining machinery goes public, it will encounter a fork, what should you do?"
and this question, which needs to be asked after the listing, has already appeared: the current price of the split coin xmo after the Monroe team split is $7.50, while the current price of the real Monroe coin XmR is $194, and the split coin is completely abandoned by the Monroe community
before bitcontinent becomes the name of all blockchain communities, we can rely on the huge amount of capital accumulated in recent years to transform into an artificial intelligence chip company along the previous plan, rather than continue to develop a variety of digital currency mining machines to extract the last drop of oil before the ecological collapse
content source: phoenix.com
as you can understand it, it's like the stock of these technology service providers. As these technologies become more and more widely used, these virtual coins will become more and more valuable
bitcoin, which appeared in 2009, is the first kind of virtual currency in the world. It is also the first time that it has applied the blockchain technology which is popular all over the world
after bitcoin, there are many imitators in the market. They either improved on the basis of bitcoin, or put forward more grand technical ideas than bitcoin. Virtual currency, which is common in other markets and considered as "regular army" by instry insiders, is collectively referred to as competitive currency. Together with bitcoin, it forms the whole digital currency market, with a total market value of nearly 100 billion US dollars
there are thousands of virtual currencies in the market, most of which are risky; In addition, there are many MLM coins that are simply for the purpose of deceiving people< In order to help you avoid being cheated, the following is a brief introction to the main "regular army":
1. Bitcoin (BTC)
bitcoin is the first virtual currency in the world, with a total of 21 million. At present, more than 16 million bitcoins have been "g up", with a total market value of about US $45 billion, equivalent to half of the total market value of all virtual coins. It is well deserved to be the number one in the coin circle
bitcoin has been accepted as payment currency by hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world; In addition, bitcoin has also become a common money raising currency in various blockchain technology startups. Therefore, with the increasing demand for bitcoin, the value of bitcoin is likely to grow in the long run
2. Eth is regarded as "bitcoin version 2.0" and is the most likely competitor to surpass the market value of bitcoin. Some time ago, the market value of bitcoin was close to that of bitcoin. However, e to the price rection in the recent month, the market value of bitcoin is only about half of that of bitcoin
Ethernet coin was born in the summer of 2014. It is issued on the Ethereum blockchain, which is different from bitcoin. Ethereum blockchain is a decentralized application platform, which solves the problems of bitcoin's technical limitation in currency application and insufficient function expansion, so it has great technical advantages
3. Bitcash (BCH)
BCH inherits a small part of bitcoin's legacy, the name of bitcoin's cash is also good, and the image logo also inherits a part of bitcoin. The ecology of BCH is also good
BCH pursues to be a world currency and an underlying platform for chain application. BCH is actively deploying the main chain expansion and developing the two-tier network to realize the ideal
the whole ecology should be made efforts from two aspects. The first direction is the expansion of the main chain, payment experience and function improvement. Capacity expansion is the guarantee to keep the certainty of monetary transaction fees very low. Improving the payment experience, including popularizing zero confirmation, pre consensus, and possibly shortening block time, are all evolving towards a better payment experience. The main chain function is perfect, including Op_ Return expansion, token issuance, new opcode addition
with the expansion of BCH main chain function, BCH based applications can be developed. The most famous are the decentralized microblog like memo, the paid download seed application like joystream, and the decentralized encrypted communication like Keyport
the second direction is to develop layer-2 network. Build a new blockchain based on BCH network, such as wormhole and kenoken, which are similar to Ethereum network based on BCH. BCH undertakes more complex block chain functions, such as notification contract, through two-layer network. The competition direction of BCH layer 2 network is to compete with the side chain of BTC
4. Lightning bitcoin (LBTC)
bitcoin has been developing for 10 years. In this decade, bitcoin has experienced three important splits, and now it has become four kinds of currencies. The first is BTC, which has inherited most of bitcoin's heritage; The second is BCH; The third is BSV and the fourth is LBTC
LBTC was born to break the power monopoly of big miner and bitcoin core bitcoin, introce more new features and functions for bitcoin, and greatly improve its performance. Lightning bitcoin (LBTC) is a peer-to-peer e-cash system, which is an innovative experiment based on bitcoin. It uses the dpos consensus mechanism based on utxo to separate the voting right and accounting right, so that the token will not be kidnapped by any party. It is a global value Internet transmission protocol with high speed, low handling charge and high scalability. Due to the adoption of dpos consensus mechanism, users can participate without professional mining machines, achieving real decentralization
the above four are the most mainstream bifurcated versions of bitcoin protocol. They are also investment procts that can realize your desire of soaring wealth. Senior managers can play with them, but the premise is that you need to be prepared for huge losses - because they are very volatile
for Xiao, I would like to say: Although virtual currency is a secret weapon for ordinary people to counter attack the sudden wealth, it's very difficult for you to make a lot of money from it
in addition, at present, the price of virtual bitcoin is at a high level, and it can not be ruled out that it will mainly be sideways in 2019. At this time, I think it is a good choice to some other mainstream bifurcation currencies, such as BCH, BSV and LBTC.
According to reports, the coin circle, which has been silent for a long time e to the bear market, has been broken recently. This time, Li Xiaolai, who is known as the "richest man in the coin circle" by the outside world, is still standing at the muzzle of the gun
on July 4, 2018, a recording of Li Xiaolai's private conversation spread on the Internet. In this conversation, which lasted for more than 50 minutes, Li Xiaolai denounced the well-known figures and blockchain projects in the coin circle in a vulgar tone, and told the interviewees about his investment tactics as a winner
this recording sounds like an explosion of information, which once again pushed Li Xiaolai to the forefront of public opinion. Due to the sensitive words mentioned in the recording, such as "don't blindly believe in value investment", "sell air currency" and so on, Li Xiaolai was identified as the banker of "cutting leeks" in the currency circle in the later public opinion
at the same time, as a former New Oriental teacher and best-selling author, Li Xiaolai has many fans after entering the blockchain instry. But in that recording, Li Xiaolai thinks that his IP and traffic are very important in the coin circle, while disdaining blind followers
What kind of person is the real Li Xiaolai? What is his way of accumulating real wealth and investing in blockchain? What kind of world is the blockchain instry todayon July 12, 2018, Li Xiaolai received an exclusive interview with the media and responded to questions from the outside world
media: who are you most optimistic about in the blockchain instry
Li Xiaolai: Wu Jihan in mainland China. I think this person is a wounded and bloody soldier in the blockchain instry. About three years ago, I told my friends about it. If there is an opponent in the world that I may not be able to fight, it is Wu Jihan. It's just that we're not on the same track, so it's also my luck
media: your little Luo Yonghao is working hard in instry, and you are working in blockchain. What do you think of the relationship between blockchain and entities
Li Xiaolai: finance is the embodiment of real economy. Finance cannot be separated from the existence of real economy. Blockchain will certainly drive the real instry, but it is still unknown how to drive itI admire Luo Yonghao's work in the real instry. He has a higher sense of happiness than me, because making a mobile phone has a much greater sense of achievement than I do in an unknown instry, and they are more easily recognized by the society
media: did Luo Yonghao comfort you after the recording leakage
Li Xiaolai: our habit is to keep quiet when we are in trouble, because how to comfort others is a very difficult thing. But then we'll talk to each other about what happened
Li Xiaolai: do you have any other questions? Today is my birthday. I'll have dinner with my wife latercontent source: phoenix.com
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.