Bitcoin fork 2 anniversary: ​​fork is very annoying, but this is fatal

"Maybe after many years, the members of the Poseidon have gathered together, and a pot of turbid wine meets, and there are many things in ancient and modern times."

On July 31, 2017, Jiang Zhuer made this passage on Weibo, expressing his feelings of confusion and fierce fighting within the Bitcoin community.

Two days later, Bitcoin forked and a newborn in the field of cryptocurrency: BCH.

Today, two years later, the price of BCH rose to 4,000 US dollars and fell back to 300 US dollars. It dominated the bite of the mainland. In the market for the listing, the mine has a new business, and the BCH has forked out the BSV. The various factions within the coin also lingered on the forks of the year and fought in the same room.

• Bitcoin futures for physical delivery have been officially launched, and Bakkt has gotten up early in the morning.
• Digital currency "national team": big countries have to control, the third world wants to overtake
• The Hollywood blockbuster "Cryptographic Currency" was released for 4 months without any interest? The director does not understand the blockchain?

Just like opening the Pandora's Box, since August 1, 2017, the successful birth of Bitcoin, not only BCH, all kinds of forked coins, but also endless disputes.

Two years ago: parting ways

On May 23, 2017, 58 company representatives from 22 countries flew around the world and gathered in New York to participate in a private meeting.

The conference, organized by Barry Silbert, founder of Digital Currency Group, the industry's top cryptocurrency investment company, will determine the future direction of Bitcoin.

Unexpectedly, Yong Yongquan, who represented Bitcoin Core and Blockstream, was turned away.

This is a conference that shields a bit of bitcoin core developer and "unauthorized" to determine the fate of Bitcoin.

Inside the venue, there is a lot of people, and the most valuable companies in the Bitcoin industry chain are gathered here, covering exchanges, mines, and real people in the entire industry chain.

"They can't represent the company, they can't represent the users, and they can't represent the developers. How can we count the agreement?" Yan Yongquan shouted and screamed outside the door.

A year ago, he was still reaching an agreement for the Bitcoin community. The conference held in Hong Kong, the scenes of the parties, and the final reach of the handshake, are still vivid.

At that time, after 18 hours of fighting, even if the difficulties were serious, the participants of the meeting laid down their prejudice and reached a consensus to determine the expansion of Bitcoin. This consensus was called "Hong Kong Consensus" by the currency circle. ".

The determination of the Hong Kong consensus has found the way for those who seek to make a living for Bitcoin, but the hidden dangers are also buried under the consensus.

At the time, the party that opposed the Bitcoin core developers was the miners group headed by Bitcoin. The latter wanted to expand directly on the original Bitcoin network. They supported the big block solution, while the former wanted to maintain the Bitcoin network. Based on the 1MB foundation, we will allocate energy to develop a segregated witness and lightning network for the Layer 2 network.

Behind the different directions, there is a huge dispute of interests. After the disappearance of Zhong Bencong, is the decision-making power of Bitcoin's fate in the hands of the core developers, or in the hands of the miners who hold the computing power?

The expansion of the dispute opened the battle for victory.

Although the meeting in Hong Kong established a consensus, I did not expect that this was just a slap in the bit mainland.

In fact, the miners headed by Bitland are not satisfied with this. After nearly a year of preparation, a new conference kicked off. This time, they directly put Bitcoin core development team Bitcoin Core and Blockstream directly. Blocked outside the door.

This staged the scene of the above-mentioned rejection of Yu Yongquan.

At this meeting in New York, the miners reached a second consensus. They agreed: the first step is to deploy the segregation testimony in August 2017, and the second step is to expand the block to 2M in November 2017. .

The plan to attack the Bitcoin developers, of course, will not be recognized by the Bitcoin Core team, who slammed the New York Consensus on every occasion.

"The New York Consensus has entangled a lot of interests. The mine owner wants to have a hard fork, and the developers will not sit still." After the miners officially declared war, Yan Yongquan and others were not to be outdone.

Since this is a conference led by the Bit Continental Department, the industry believes that if the new scheme is adopted, it will eventually be the own competitor's own coin and altcoin, which is “unrelated to the orthodox bitcoin”.

“It’s not for miners and Bitcoin users to confront, it’s a confrontation between some Core developers and Bitcoin users.” As early as 2016, Jiang Zall expressed this view. He believes that "the Core team should use the funds for the development of Bitcoin to provide a better Bitcoin solution for the Bitcoin community, rather than for the fight."

The situation continues to ferment and the war continues to escalate.

Because the scheme of bitcoin soft fork has not been agreed, the angry Wu Jihan directly sacrificed the killing.

A micro-bit scheme, a mine-invested micro-bit, announced a hard-forked scheme that no longer chooses to bow and compromise, but directly “forks”. According to the plan, the new forked coin capacity will reach 8M, can accommodate transactions more than 8 times than Bitcoin, and is not compatible with the isolation testimony.

Under the tying and calling of Wu Jihan and others, the new plan was implemented. Today, two years ago, on August 1, 2017, the micro-bits dug out the first block.

Since then, the forked coin BCH, which competes with Bitcoin, has been born.

Bitcoin hidden danger

As early as 2009, when Nakamoto created Bitcoin, he buried a time bomb.

In the beginning, Satoshi Nakamoto designed a 1M capacity for Bitcoin to prevent the attacker from overloading the Bitcoin network. However, as the impact of Bitcoin continues to spread, the user volume is getting larger and larger, and the original capacity is not enough. use. Users use Bitcoin to transfer money more and more slowly, and the transfer fee is getting higher and higher.

Nakamoto has not expected this situation. After the white paper was released, one of his questions in the community was the potential for bitcoin expansion in the future.

For this hidden danger, members of the Bitcoin community have also scratched their heads. Although hundreds of proposals have appeared before and after, there are no reasons for agreement.

In 2016 and 2017, this problem has become a constraint to the development of Bitcoin.

Two different forces within the Bitcoin community – the bitcoin core developer Bitcoin Core and the miners – were formed at this stage, and the conflict between the two sides has intensified.

Bitcoin Core holds the most critical code of Bitcoin and the most loyal trust of Bitcoin believers. The miners, led by Bitcoin, represent the core strength of the new block for the Bitcoin network.

For the problem of Bitcoin, the former advocates that the block size of 1M is unchanged, and uses the isolated witness and lightning network in the upper layer of Bitcoin; the latter hopes to turn to the regional fast and upgrade the capacity.

The constant fighting and game between the two sides, in the case of uncoordinated circumstances, eventually led to the split of bitcoin, and the Bitcoin believers who had stood on the same front, parted ways.

As the first hard fork ends, new problems begin to emerge.

Many people believe that the unilateral forcible split between Bitland and Wu Jihan has destroyed the original harmonious ecology of Bitcoin. Coin partner, Xiong Yue, dean of the Credit Research Institute, said in an interview that only the original chain can be finally successful, and the fork currency will weaken the value of the original chain to a certain extent.

It is also this fork, the notoriety of Wu Jihan’s “mine tyrant” was spread.

BCH is forked

On August 1, 2017, Bitcoin forked out of BCH, supporting BCH's faction, not only the founder of the Bitian continent, Wu Jihan, but also a person who was also in the future because of the fork, the currency of the ring: Craig Steven Wright (CSW), known as Oban.

At that time, Bitcoin Unlimited (BU), a technical team supporting the Bitland expansion program, was an ally, accepted Wu Jihan from CSW, and also invited CSW to participate in the BCH high-level meeting.

Time has not changed for one year. Wu Jihan, who once fought alongside CSW, finally met with the swordsmen.

After the essay was issued, CSW publicly threatened: In fact, he does not support the BCH fork in August 2017. In order to correct this error, he is accumulating power quickly, threatening to attack BCH, and further attacking the elimination of Bitcoin, so that the bit The currency returned to Core before it led.

As soon as this statement came out, his friendship with Bitian China fell apart instantly.

For the reason of the BCH calculation power war in November 2018, the mainstream view is that the pursuit of BCH development route by CSW and Wu Jihan is not adjustable. The party headed by CSW tends to let BCH return to the original plan of Nakamoto, while Wu Jihan believes that BCH should be transformed to meet the actual needs.

In the recent live broadcast, the witness Jiang Zaller believes that CSW insists on separating the BSV for another reason.

He believes that CSW seems to be the leader of the BSV community, but in fact CSW is just a pawn, the gold master and controller behind the BSV is the casino squatting Calvin Ayre, and Calvin Ayre's ultimate goal is to use Coingeek from the Canadian stock market. Make money. BCH forked BSV, just a step in the capital layout of Calvin Ayre, he believes that the entire split is planned and premeditated.

In the face of Jiang Zall’s allegations, Ao Bencon at the other end of the screen did not respond positively.

For this fork, some media have asked CSW: What do you want from this battle? He replied: "Victory. In the end, native Bitcoin. There are no other compromises and there will be no compromises. I have no compromise here."

Eventually, on November 16, 2018, BCH split into ABC and BSV.

What is the real reason why CSW forks out the BSV? We can't clarify it, but at least one thing is certain. That is, this forked war, the ultimate "back pot" is the BCH community and even the entire cryptocurrency.

Who is the real bitcoin?

There are two types of bitcoin forks: soft forks and hard forks.

The soft fork is backward compatible, that is, the new and old nodes can run normally after the upgrade; the hard fork is the opposite: all nodes must be upgraded, and nodes that are not upgraded cannot run normally.

The biggest risk of hard forks is that soft forks can be rolled back because it is optional to rely on new rules. But the hard fork can't be rolled back. If there is a bug in the upgrade, you can only do another hard fork, which is easy to fall into the sinister situation of constant fork.

"The actual problem of the BTC network can be solved in the forked currency, which is very rare." Industry insiders have said.

Since many of the fork projects since August 2017, in fact, they have not promoted the development of Bitcoin, but have brought endless troubles to Bitcoin.

Ted Rogers, president of Bitcoin Wallet Xapo, said a word when describing bitcoin forks: "The Genie is out of the Bottle."

After BCH, there are more than ten kinds of new currency in the market: BCD, BCG, SBTC… These projects with improved and optimized bitcoin flags, except for the money, are useless, and greatly damaged. Bitcoin, if you look at it from this point of view, the first bit of bitcoin that hard-forked bitcoin is the "monster."

For the BCH power war that once stirred the coin, the higher the bear calls "BCH is dead", the currency blogger "BTC sniper" also agrees the same point: "The real BCH is dead, the rest , just the two split coins BCHabc and BCHsv."

"We are caught in a 'cryptocurrency civil war'." Cinnamon analyst Brian Kelly said traders are concerned that the bitcoin and BCH markets will be slowed or "chaotic" after the software upgrade.

To this day, the discussion about who is inherited the success of Satoshi Satoshi, who is the real bitcoin, is still going on. The splitting of the consensus caused by several forks is constantly reducing the consensus of Bitcoin, but on both sides, what follows is the cryptocurrency ecology that continues to prosper and grow.

It was not a good day to dominate the bit-continent of bitcoin.

Earlier, according to leaked bit mainland financing documents, the media found that Bitcoin China had more than 1 million BCHs, accounting for more than 5% of the current circulation. In addition, it accounted for the total volume since the hard fork. More than 12.5%, it can be said that "direct control of BCH."

Keeping control of BCH's bit continent, enjoying the spotlight, it is also very tired.

In September 2018, Bitland went to Hong Kong for listing. In a 438-page prospectus, Bittland said that as of the first half of 2018, Bitcoin lost more than $100 million in cryptocurrency impairment. As we all know, a large part of the cryptocurrency held by this company is BCH.

Shortly after the birth, the BCH, a weak newborn, had to rely on the power behind Wu Jihan, and this eventually became the burden of the “sweet” of Bitian.

In the animal world, if the ant nest wants to expand externally, it must rely on the new ant to leave the ant nest and go outside to rebuild its own independent kingdom.

In the realm of digital currency, people with different beliefs in Bitcoin, after choosing different roads, have also established their own independent development process as new ants.

As for these new "anthills", they consider themselves to be orthodox bitcoins, and plan to surpass bitcoin or even bitcoin.

Behind the loneliness is the worship of technology, or the desire for money and rights. This is unknown.

Text / 31QU Zhang Yu, Lin Jun

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