Liu Chang with: the beginning and end of the expansion of Bitcoin

The dispute over Bitcoin expansion was exposed to public view in May 2015, and the New York Consensus announced its suspension in November 2017. It lasted for two and a half years. According to the "one dollar day, one year in the world", it was a hundred years of cryptocurrency. .

Bitcoin expansion was blocked, resulting in bitcoin congestion and high fees, which led to the proliferation of competitive currencies, crazy ICO, forked coin tide, public chain wars, TPS leap forward… especially the birth of BCH. A simple problem that can be solved by a few lines of code in Nakamoto's view has evolved into a long-lasting war that eventually changed the direction of Bitcoin and changed the cryptocurrency pattern. This is something that everyone has not expected.

The war is very complicated. To this day, the ins and outs of the expansion dispute are still unclear. Even people who are familiar with it only know the parts around them, and it is difficult to see the evolution of the whole situation. So that based on different positions, contexts and purposes, the facts and causes and consequences of the expansion of the dispute often appear diametrically opposed, and often endless after the war.

This article attempts to clarify the disputes between expansion and expansion, with a view to resolving disputes, and also helps to understand the logic of the development of cryptocurrencies and better explore the future of cryptocurrencies. Relevant parties are also welcome to review, criticize and correct. 【1】

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First, the reason for the expansion

The “expansion” of Bitcoin expansion is to increase the block expansion of the block ceiling, which is the core of the war. The segregated testimony proposed by the party against the block expansion can also achieve a 30% increase in the volume of each transaction, and the establishment of a lightning network outside the main chain can handle more transactions. These are not the focus of debate. In order to avoid confusion, the term “expansion” in this paper refers to “block expansion” that increases the block ceiling, rather than various measures with expansion effects.

Nakamoto's original code has a maximum limit of 32M for each block. It is said that this code originated from other projects borrowed from other projects, originally with a 32M limit. The actual block size in the first two years after Bitcoin is running is within 0.5K. In the absence of a direct explanation of the reasons, Nakamoto bought a block capacity limit of 1M in July 2010.

On October 3, 2010, early developer Jeff Garzik posted a proposal to increase the capacity limit to 7.1M. But at this time, the actual size of the block is still around 0.5k. Nakamoto said that the immediate modification will result in incompatible software versions (that is, the hard forks mentioned later). He suggested adding conditions to certain areas when updating the code. The height of the block increases the block limit, so that the expansion can be done naturally and the incompatibility (forking) problem is solved. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.0)

In Nakamoto's view, the transaction volume was small at the time, and there was no need to raise the limit. However, in order to prepare for future trading volume growth, when the block is not full, the code will be upgraded in advance to increase the block capacity. At the time, everyone did not feel that there was a problem. However, in 2015, it caused a far-reaching expansion.

Second, the unexpected expansion problem

In December 2010, WikiLeaks announced that it would accept bitcoin donations. Nakamoto believes that this has “smashed the horse cell” and then withdrew from “public life”, handing over the rights of Bitcoin development to his trusted Gavin Andresen and keeping with Gavin. Private communication for a while.

The first thing Gavin did after taking over management rights was decentralization, giving code development management rights to four other developers. In April 2014, he transferred the “chief developer” identity and authority to Wladimir van der Laan , resigned as the core maintainer of Bitcoin, focused on software development, and retained only the identity of the “chief scientist” of the Bitcoin Foundation.

Mike Hearn, the lead developer of Bitcoinj, believes that these core developers are not suitable for management. They are rushing to the shelves, just to ensure that Gavin can continue the project when something happens. But he stressed that Gregory Maxwell has an unusual idea among the four developers: "He once claimed that he had mathematically proved that Bitcoin could not exist. The bigger problem is that he does not believe in the original concept of Nakamoto. (https://www.tmtpost.com/1498771.html) Mike emphasizes this at least to illustrate the particularity of Gregory Maxwell in Bitcoin Core, which may be the key to understanding the expansion.

In August 2014, Adam Back [2], core developer Gregory Maxwell, and entrepreneur and investor Austin Hill, core developers Pieter Wuille, Matt Corallo and others created the Bitcoin technology company Blockstream . The company focuses on sidechain technology, an alternative blockchain that can be effectively linked to Bitcoin. At the end of 2014 and early 2016, Blockstream received $21 million in seed round investment and $55 million in Series A financing. According to Gregory Maxwell , Blockstream was built for bitcoin development.

In February 2013, Jeff Garzik's expansion post was once again lifted. At this time, the block has reached 150K, and expansion should be considered. Since then, discussions on topics such as block caps, junk transactions, hard forks, and fees have begun. (https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/30930715)

In January 2015, the actual size of the block has reached 0.3M. Considering the development test cycle, the expansion problem has become very urgent. However, the Bitcoin core development team has not been able to reach a consensus on block expansion. In early May 2015, Gavin publicly made a formal proposal to expand the block limit to 20M on March 1, 2016. However, this proposal has not been supported by core development leaders.

In letters signed by Bitcoin core developers Wladimir van der Laan, Cory Fields, Luke Dashjr, Jonas Schnelli, Gregory Maxwell and several companies including blockstream, the signatories claim to be committed to Bitcoin development, serving The Bitcoin community has completed more than 50 code upgrades in the past five years. Considering that Bitcoin is so important, they need to consider capacity expansion under the premise of ensuring security. (https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy)

In this signature letter, there are a few key developers who support the expansion: Gavin Andresen, Mike Hearn, and Jeff Garzik. This implies a serious disagreement within the developer on the issue of capacity expansion.

In response to Gavin's expansion proposal, Jeff Garzik proposed the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP100, recommending the mine to vote on the chain, and more than 75% of the calculations agreed to expand. Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn proposed BIP101, which is recommended to expand to 2M and then double every two years. Beyond the Bitcoin Core version, Gavin and Mike began implementing 20M expansion and BIP101 in the Bitcoin XT node version. Bitcoin XT is a full-site version of the bitcoin compatible with Core that Gavin established in 2012. It is becoming a competitive or alternative version of Core for expansion. (https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin_XT)

For Gavin's suggestion, the main objections seen by the public came from the Chinese mining pool, and Gavin also went to China to fight for the support of the mine. At that time, the world's top five mining pools, China accounted for four. Most Chinese mining pools believe that China's network bandwidth is insufficient, and large block synchronization delays are even greater. The 20M block has caused Chinese miners to mine at a disadvantage relative to foreign countries. Therefore, in June 2015, Antpool, F2Pool, BTCChina, BW.com and Huobi.com reached a consensus on the five major Chinese mining pools, supported BIP100, opposed BIP101, and agreed to expand the block to 8M .

However, the real expansion resistance is not from the miners, but from inside the developers. In his May 2015 proposal, Gavin mentioned two key ideas that were later known to oppose expansion:

1) Lightning network and side chain can solve the problem of capacity expansion;
2) Block enlargement requires higher bandwidth and storage leading to node centering.

Obviously, Gavin's expansion proposal has met with opposition within the developer's internal discussion, but it has not been exposed to the public. The final success of the Gavin Bitcoin expansion plan is not the miners, but the “segregation witness + lightning network” (SegWit+Lightning, or SW+LN) development route proposed by some core developers: signing the transaction by implementing Segregation Witness (SegWit) Separate from the transaction itself and placed outside the block, 1) increase the number of transactions accommodated by the block, 2) eliminate the scalability technical problems encountered in deploying the lightning network, and 3) the lightning network can accommodate more transactions. This eliminates the need for block expansion.

In February 2015, Dryja and Poon published "Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Offline Instant Payment", the Lightning Network White Paper. The lightning network at the Hong Kong meeting to discuss the expansion in December 2015 attracted attention. In order to solve the problem of the impact of the lightning network, and in order to achieve partial expansion, in December 2015, Core proposed the Segwit program. Subsequently, Gregory Maxwell (Blockstream CTO) wrote the lightning network to the Bitcoin roadmap, forming the “Separate Witness + Lightning Network” route. However, at this time, Core did not publicly indicate that this route will completely replace the block expansion, and there is no clear opposition to block expansion, but only emphasizes the need to expand safely and cautiously.

At this point, Gavin's main block expansion plan and the core developers of Blockstream's core developers who have mastered bitcoin development have formed.

Third, speech control and the failure of Bitcoin XT

In the second half of 2015, as the median block capacity increased from 0.3M at the time of Gavin's proposed expansion to 0.7M in December, the focus of the expansion problem in the community increased rapidly. First reflected in two important forums for Bitcoin: bitcointalk.org and Reddit's bitcoin version created by Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2015, Theymos served as the administrator of these two forums.

In August 2015, Bitcoin XT, which expanded the main block, caused a hot discussion on Reddit's r/bitcoin version. Theymos believe that r/bitcoin is in chaos and announces its control. Theymos stressed that Bitcoin XT is a split of Bitcoin Core and will be an altcoin. He opposes this splitting behavior and prohibits discussion of expansion related issues, prohibits the release of Bitcoin XT-related content, and blocks related accounts. (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/)

The Themos's speech and regulatory actions were fiercely criticized and resisted as a free-spirited, consistently decentralized and anti-regulatory bitcoin community, but Core Core developers expressed support for Theymos. Speech control, especially for block expansion and suppression of Bitcoin XT supporters, has been implemented in the forum. [3]

In order to counter the control of speech, we have room for discussion on the issue of expansion. Roger Ver founded bitcoin.com's CTO @MagmaHindenburg to create the r/btc version of Reddit. A large number of Bitcoin expansion supporters then moved from r/bitcoin to r/btc. At present, the user of r/bitcoin version is 1000k, and the user of r/btc version is 254k. The r/btc version became the main version of BCH on Reddit after the birth of BCH. This also confused many new people. Why is the btc version discussing bch? The r/bitcoincash version has only 43.3k users, and the r/bch version has only 2.5k users. This is caused by the historical expansion.

In this media battle, Core has gained an absolute advantage with bitcointalk.org and reddit/r/bitcoin, as well as actual control of the official website bitcoin.org. [4] Even the largest and most famous bitcoin startup in the United States, Coinbase, was delisted by the Bitcoin official website and was banned by the forum because it stood on the "wrong" side. (https://news.bitcoin.com/coinbase-still-de-listed-bitcoin-org-github-request-rejected/)

However, the final blow to Bitcoin XT was the collapse of Bitcoin XT under pressure. In January 2016, Mike Hearn announced that “Bitcoin is dead”!

Mike is a senior developer of Bitcoin, working with Gavin to promote Bitcoin XT, facing 1) Core and Blockstream's control over Bitcoin development rights, 2) Theymos's control over community voice, and 3) Chinese miners who have the advantage of computing power. Core's loyalty, Mike is desperate.

Mike believes that the decentralized currency test of Bitcoin has failed because the system is completely controlled by a few people, it becomes congested, expensive, and unable to compete with the traditional financial system, and the channel for the community to understand the truth is completely controlled. It makes people care about the real problem, but instead attacks the person who asks the question.

Mike believes that Bitcoin Core uses delaying tactics for expansion and is very effective. The most common reason miners and startups reject Bitcoin XT is "We are waiting for Bitcoin Core to expand in December." Core's two “expansion meetings” held in August and December 2015 were fruitless. At this time, Coinbase and Bitcoin China and other major expansion companies have just woken up and found it fooled.

Although Mike still has hopes for the emerging Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited, he himself has lost confidence in the face of difficulties and announced that the foundation of Bitcoin has collapsed. He has sold all Bitcoin and left Bitcoin completely. ( https://www.tmtpost.com/1498771.html)

Mike's statement made him immediately a public enemy of the Bitcoin community, and it also caused great damage to Gavin's reputation and expansion. The expansion version of Bitcoin XT failed.

Fourth, Bitcoin Classic and Hong Kong consensus

Bitcoin XT failed, but Gavin did not give up the expansion. Knowing that it is impossible to promote Bitcoin Core expansion, in January 2016, Gavin and Jeff Garzik and Peter Rizun established a new development team Bitcoin Classic. Expansion into the Bitcoin Classic phase.

Due to the rapid growth of the actual capacity of the block, the median reached 0.7M, and 1M full block appeared frequently. The urgency of capacity expansion quickly became the consensus of the entire Bitcoin community including China's mining industry. The vast majority of opinion leaders and key companies expressed support for expanding block capacity constraints. (https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy#BIP_109)

As a result, Bitcoin Classic quickly gained more than 50% of the computational power of Antpool and BW mines, and plans to support 75% of the power support to upgrade to 2M in order to cope with the upcoming congestion. The Bitcoin Classic hard fork expansion capacity competes with Bitcoin Core's SW+LN solution.

In the face of expansion and Classic competition, Blockstream is very dissatisfied with Gavin, Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic and Chinese miners, and its CEO Austin Hill said "a large number of companies based on Bitcoin enjoy the hard work of the developer community. The result, no thank you, but I don't like your color, so I am going to abandon you."

In the absence of mutual consent, the entire community began to panic about “hard forks” and even “splits” in the community. Of course, the main fear split brought the collapse of the currency price!

On January 23, 2016, China Mining Conference reached the so-called "92 Consensus": more than 90% of the calculations supported the expansion of 2M consensus, and generally agreed with Bitcoin Classic's expansion claims, but raised the consensus requirements (from 75% to 90%). Analogy to the relationship between Taiwan and the sea, emphasizing the expansion of the premise of "no war, no division", dubbed the "92 Consensus" (https://www.chainnode.com/post/28405).

At the party, Bit Continental CEO Wu Jihan and Haobtc CEO Wu Gang suggested that companies should send people to participate in Bitcoin development, train their core developers, contribute to Bitcoin development, and improve their voice in the core. To dilute the influence of Blockstream, this is the ultimate solution to the problem. (https://www.chainnode.com/post/29343)

On January 28, 2016, Gavin proposed BIP109, a bitcoin improvement proposal. It is recommended to expand to 2M, and 75% of the computing power will be implemented.

On the basis of the "92 Consensus" and BIP109, in order to avoid the split, the Hong Kong meeting was held on February 22, 2016. The Chinese miners reached an agreement with several Core developers and Blockstream CEO Adam Back. [5] Both parties agreed to continue to implement the segregation witness soft fork. After the segregation witness, the Core expanded the block to 2M through hard forks, and gave a timetable: the segregation testimony was issued in April 2016; the hard bifurcation was completed in July. Code; implemented a hard fork upgrade in July 2017 with community support. At the cost, China Mining is committed to supporting only the Core version. (https://blog.csdn.net/qq53016353/article/details/51183779, https://www.lieyunwang.com/archives/416445) This is the so-called "Hong Kong Consensus."

Five, Gavin lost his letter and retired

In the Hong Kong consensus, the mining industry compromised and abandoned Core's important competitive development team, Bitcoin Classic, in exchange for Core's expansion commitment.

However, the Hong Kong consensus has not been fulfilled by Core. The Core members who attended the Hong Kong meeting were accused of returning. Block Back CEO Adam Back, who signed the Hong Kong Consensus Agreement, signed his name and did not represent the company. Chinese miners feel deceived, and Bituland Wu Jihan warned Core on Twitter that he would not implement Segwit without 2M hard fork code.

By May 2016, the median bitcoin block has reached 1M! The fee has started to increase. However, Core's Segwit was not released on time. The community’s call to restart Classic is back. Gavin is still an important force driving expansion. But an accident has completely smashed Gavin's expansion journey.

At the end of 2015, Australian Craig S. Wright (CSW) began to publicly claim to be Nakamoto. Almost every year, there will be similar incidents in which Nakamoto will appear, but they are all scams or misunderstandings, and the impact is not significant. However, at the critical point of the May 2016 expansion, it was said that CSW presented some evidence to Gavin Andresen and the then chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, earning two trusts. Gavin publicly declared that CSW is Nakamoto Satoshi (http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi), which was a sensational news at the time.

The BBC also launched a report on the CSW incident. As we all know, the most simple way to prove yourself is to prove that you own the private key of the Nakamoto Shoji mining address. There are at least two methods: one is to move the currency of Nakamoto in a pre-speaking manner, and the other is to The new information is signed with the Nakamoto private key and publicly verified.

On May 3, 2016, CSW promised to move Nakamoto's currency, but when it was given to Gavin and BBC reporters on May 4th. He suddenly announced that an early security breach in Bitcoin would put him at great risk of transferring Bitcoin. Gavin told him that the vulnerability had been resolved, but CSW suddenly left the room and never returned. Subsequently, an apology letter was issued stating that it was not willing to prove that it had a Nakamoto private key for security reasons. [6]

However, since then, in a blog discussing verification signatures, CW has given a signature to Sutter's work using Nakamoto's early private key. It was only recently that someone wrote an article that was only the signature of a bitcoin transaction sent by Nakamoto in the early days. [7] Not only that, but CW also forged more evidence. For example, he modified his old blog in 2008 and inserted the “password currency” to prove that he had studied the password currency at that time. ( https://www.qklzhg.cn/news/87623/) There are more disclosures and doubts about CSW in the cited literature.

CSW's counter-insurance and false-signature incident on the BBC caused a fatal blow to Gavin and expansion. The entire Bitcoin community believes that CSW is a liar, and Gavin has become an accomplice to the swindler. He and his efforts to expand have been despised, and the expansion itself has been more skeptical. Core has occupied a moral high.

In this way, Gavin lost his community trust and had to announce his withdrawal from the Core development team, completely losing his influence on Bitcoin development and losing the impetus for expansion. This is the first major impact of CSW on Bitcoin.

It is not clear what makes CW gain the trust of Gavin. Understandably, on the road to difficult expansion, Gavin really needs the support of Nakamoto!

Sixth, the rise of Bitcoin Unlimited

After the bitcoin block was congested, Core finally stopped the delay tactics and publicly opposed the block expansion. In May 2016, Core Core developers Gregory Maxwell and Mark Friedenbach and others publicly opposed the Hong Kong consensus. Once opposed to the expansion of 20M, it is now quite dramatic that Chinese miners who feel that they have been deceived by Core have begun to replace Gavin, which they once opposed, have become the main force of the expansion.

At bitcointalk.org, Gregory Maxwell rebuked the Core members who attended the Hong Kong meeting as "dipshits," warning the community that although the scammer CSW and its behind-the-scenes supporters (meaning Gavin) have disappeared, external attacks have weakened, but Bitcoin The ability of the community to weaken oneself cannot be ignored. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1330553.msg14835202#msg14835202) From a follow-up perspective, Gregory Maxwell seems to have more influence than the total number of Core members who have participated in the Hong Kong Consensus. Samson Mow, who entered Blockstream afterwards, also claimed that there is no breach of contract in the Hong Kong Consensus because several Core developers attending the conference cannot represent the Core team (https://www.lieyunwang.com/archives/416445).

In addition to conspiracy theories of Core's consensus on Hong Kong's consensus, the rational explanation is that the hard developmentists such as Gregory Maxwell and Luke Dashjr in the Core development team rejected the public commitment of Adam Back and several core core developers in the Hong Kong consensus. Regardless of how Adam Back and others look at it, in the case of Chinese miners who made a compromise to abandon Bitcoin Classic, this is indeed a deception!

Yuki Wang Yu said he was deceived by Blockstream CEO Adam Back, who signed the Hong Kong Consensus. (https://www.8btc.com/article/95353) Samson Mow, who is a Bitcoin China COO, also criticized Gregory for underestimating the seriousness of the problem, which undermined community cooperation.

At the end of 2015, in order to avoid Core obstruction and promote block expansion, Andrew Clifford, Andrew Stone, Peter Rizun and others formed Bitcoin Unlimited (BU). On November 26, 2015, Andrew Stone released BUIP1, which began to be controlled by Core. Organization development outside of BIP.

In general, BU continued the basic route of BIP100 and BIP109, allowing miners to dynamically mark the block size limit, and realize the elastic expansion of the block through the miner's “Emergent Consensus” (https://www.8btc.com/article /108473). After receiving a $500,000 donation in August 2016, Bitcoin Unlimited was registered as a non-profit organization. [8] (https://www.8btc.com/article/100975)

The emergence of Bitcoin Unlimited is of course subject to Core's resistance. At the expansion meeting organized by Blockstream, BTCC, Kraken and Bitfury in September 2016, BU, one of the sponsors, proposed four proposals, but they were all rejected at the meeting. The war between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited has begun. (https://www.8btc.com/article/105060)

On September 25, 2016, the expansion supporters held the "Satoshi's Vision: Development and Scaling Conference" in San Francisco [9]. The focus was on the BU route by Bitcoin Unlimited members. And its main improvements: emerging consensus, Xthin blocks, Xpedited Block Reply and more. (http://www.onchainscaling.com)

This conference is a climax of a series of expansion conferences that have been independent of Core since June 2016. Participating in and supporting this series of conferences include Roger Ver, Jeff Garzik, Emin Gun Sirer, Peter Rizun, Andrew Clifford, Amaury Sechet and others. (http://www.onchainscaling.com) Gavin Andresen also clearly expressed support for BU. (https://www.8btc.com/article/120132) Bitcoin Unlimited is not just a expanded version, but a highly anticipated expansion of the entire Bitcoin expansion.

Unlike the Bitcoin Classic, BU quickly gained support from some mining forces. In October 2016, the founder of the Viabtc pool, which was invested by Bitland, was the first to announce support for BU. In order to be untouched by people, the famous early Bitcoin investor, Roger Ver, known as "Bitcoin Jesus", also created the Bitcoin.com mining pool and announced support for BU. BGT.top mining pool founder Jiang Zhuoer, Bit Continental's ant mine pool, etc. also support BU. (https://www.8btc.com/article/120132)

It can be said that after a long struggle, after recognizing Core's procrastination tactics, especially after the Hong Kong consensus was deceived, the Bitcoin community formed a firm expansion. They no longer believe in Core, no longer compromise the Core, no longer afraid of splitting threats. , giving Bitcoin Unlimited a high level of support. The moment of decisive battle is coming.

Seven, the moment of decisive battle and the fiasco of Bitcoin Unlimited

After explicitly opposing the expansion of the block, Core's "Separated Witness + Lightning Network" route is more clear: firstly through the soft fork to achieve isolation testimony, then online lightning network, lightning network to undertake the main chain payment function, to achieve a generalized expansion . [11] In November 2016, the Core development team released the Segwit code, submitted it to BIP141 on December 21 and asked everyone to start voting on November 19th. The activation line is 95% and the voting position is bit-1. (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0141.mediawiki)

The basic idea of ​​segregating witnesses is to separate the signature of the transaction from the transaction and place it outside the original block. The main benefits are three:

1) Eliminate transaction scalability. In the case of a transaction and a signature, the hashed transaction ID can hash the new transaction ID if the signature is valid. For exchanges and wallets that determine whether the transfer is successful based on the transaction ID, it may be deceived to be re-issued, that is, the so-called "extended attack", which has been encountered by many exchanges such as Mt.Gox. Separating transaction information and signatures with segregated witnesses can make transaction IDs unique and eliminate scalability issues.
2) Advance the lightning network. By eliminating scalability and achieving unique transaction IDs, the development of Lightning Networks and other applications can be made easier.
3) Expand 30% capacity. Since the signature is placed outside the original block, the 1M block can accommodate more transactions, which is equivalent to expanding the block capacity. According to estimates, it is possible to increase the capacity by 30%, which is equivalent to expanding the block to 1.3M. This is actually the case. It is said that in the test environment, the maximum capacity can be expanded to 4M. This became a supporter of the Core, saying that the isolation testimony is also an important basis for block expansion. (https://www.8btc.com/article/139051)

Before the failure of the Hong Kong consensus, the Bitcoin community generally supported the isolation testimony of Core. However, after Core’s failure to believe in the Hong Kong consensus, there are more people who oppose the segregation of witnesses. The main reasons include:

1) SegWit changes the underlying data structure. Segregated Witness strips the signature from the original transaction, changing the underlying structure of the Bitcoin: the structure of the transaction and the block.

2) SegWit strengthens development centering. Isolation Witness modifies a large amount of code, making subsequent development more complex and relying on Core, reducing the decentralization of development;

3) SegWit updates are irreversible. Once the quarantine witness type transaction is wound up, the entire system can no longer abolish the quarantine witness, because this will result in the loss of funds for all quarantine witness transactions.

4) Increase the risk of attack by 51%. Since the quarantine witness transaction is a transaction that everyone can spend in the non-segregated witness version, as the quarantine witness transaction increases, the potential gains of launching a 51% attack plundering quarantine witness transaction funds are growing.

5) Change the direction of Bitcoin development. In conjunction with controlling block capacity and implementing lightning networks, Core's goal of segregating witnesses is to remove the payment function of the Bitcoin backbone and turn the target of Bitcoin from currency to settlement network.

6) Missed the opportunity to develop the bull market. At that time, the bull market had already started, and the expansion of the block could immediately expand the capacity to meet the market demand of the bull market. At the same time, it would take at least "18 months" to expand the capacity through the isolation witness and the lightning network.
(https://www.jinse.com/news/bitcoin/14804.html)

In addition to the expansion and isolation testimony, the community’s disagreements also have hard forks. Another reason for Core's opposition to block expansion is that directly increasing the block capacity limit requires hard fork upgrade, that is, the upgraded version is not compatible with the previous version. If some nodes are not upgraded, the blockchain will be split into two. chain. Core (especially Gregory Maxwell) thinks this is too dangerous, and the isolation testimony is achieved by a soft fork upgrade, which is more secure.

Support for block expansion supports hard forks, as this is really necessary. But those who support the quarantine witness also have a lot of support for hard fork implementation, because the code size of the quarantine witness is inherently large, and the soft fork needs to add more code and more complexity in order to be compatible with the previous version. Moreover, in the long run, continuous soft fork upgrades will lead to more and more complex system code and more and more technical debt.

After the rise of Bitcoin Unlimited, a more serious disagreement could not be avoided: Can Core and the firm expansionists no longer compromise and accept the split of Bitcoin? This problem is closely related to expansion and hard forks. If Core does not compromise, expansion and hard fork will lead to split. Most community members are afraid of splitting, fearing the collapse of the currency.

However, the voice of the expansion party accepting division has gradually increased. In June 2016, Meni Rosenfeld published an article "How do I overcome the fear of forks and fall in love with forks" (https://fieryspinningsword.com/2015/08/25/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and -love-the-fork/) In August, Andrew Hinkes used the Ethereum to analyze the possibility of bitcoin forks in the expansion meeting of the chain (http://www.onchainscaling.com), which was used by Liu Chang in December. The article argues that the essence of contradiction is the dispute between the two lines of the world currency and the settlement network. It is difficult to reconcile, and the exploration of the forks is a feasible solution. The probability of exploring the overall success in both directions is greater. (https://www.8btc.com/article/113497)

By the beginning of 2017, the bitcoin bull market had just started. In the case of a bitcoin network transaction congestion and a 10x increase in fees, the expansion and fork problems became very acute. Expectations, panic, anxiety, anger and other emotions permeated the community. .

At this time, the global Bitcoin community revolves around: 1) whether to support block expansion; 2) whether to support segregated witnesses; 3) whether to support hard fork upgrades; 4) whether to trust Core; 5) whether to accept bitcoin splits, etc. A key point has formed a complex pattern. Generally formed three camps:

1) Core and its staunch supporters. Both support the isolation testimony. A very small number of core members are firmly opposed to block expansion, and Luke Dashjr even advocates shrinking blocks to 0.5 or 0.3M. However, most people still hope to expand, but only firmly support all decisions of Core;

2) Firmly expand the party. Support BU, do not trust Core, insist on hard forked block expansion, not even afraid of fork. The opinions on SegWit are not consistent. Most people are willing to accept SegWit under the premise of block expansion, and a few people firmly oppose SegWit.

3) Unify the neutrals. They support block expansion, some support hard fork upgrades, most support isolated witnesses, do not fully trust Core, and do not fully trust BU. The key thing is that they believe that bitcoin can only have one chain, and bitcoin can never be split anyway!

At the beginning of 2017, the competition between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited was heated up. Through block voting, the computing power to support BU expansion and support for segregated witnesses failed to reach 30%.

In the face of the deadlock, isolated witness supporter Shaolin Fry proposed a more aggressive SegWit implementation, "User Soft Fork Activation" (UASF), and formed a formal proposal BIP148 on March 12, 2017. The proposal suggests that the developer set the quarantine witness activation date in the new version, the node updates to the new version, no power vote, and the quarantine witness is automatically activated at expiration.

The key to the UASF is to bypass the miners, and the computing power no longer has the power to decide. Shaolin Fry explicitly opposes the miners (computing power) to determine the consensus rules, and his further revision of the UASF is proposed on October 1 (later ahead of August 1st https://www.8btc.com/article/124483) miners will be To request activation of SegWit, otherwise mining will not receive block rewards. (https://www.8btc.com/article/121626) (https://www.8btc.com/article/120365) Yu Yongquan is a staunch supporter and advocate of the UASF. (https://www.8btc.com/article/139051)

Bit Continental Wu Jihan firmly opposes the UASF, and he believes that the UASF without the support of power will lead to division. Subsequently, in March 2017, the ant mine pool will switch all the power to BU, and the BU support rate will exceed 30%. (https://www.8btc.com/article/120552) BU's support rate in the community has also increased rapidly. Core and its staunch supporters are no longer the majority.

Gregory Maxwell does not approve of the UASF and believes the risk is too great. (https://www.8btc.com/article/125814) But the UASF is an attractive option for Core supporters who want to bypass the stalemate and deploy SegWit as soon as possible. On March 24th, the famous Bitfury mine pool was marked with support for UASF (https://www.8btc.com/article/122659). However, more mining is neutral, including Wu Gang’s good bitcoin (current currency letter), which was at the time in China, and the world’s largest pool of fish ponds.

However, Core's biggest advantage lies in continuous development experience and technical strength, which is lacking in BU. Moreover, the BU has designed complex elastic expansion for expansion, and added new features such as Xthin, which increases the complexity of development. Andreas Antonopoulos, a well-known bitcoin technologist and author of "Proficient Bitcoin", warned BU's consensus system and hard forks to be at risk (https://www.8btc.com/article/122522). He would rather support Bitcoin Classic. (https://www.8btc.com/article/122765)

It is the technical problem of BU that eventually led to the defeat of BU and expansion.

A bug in the BU on February 2, 2017 caused Bitcoin.com to dig a lone block. As the bug is resolved quickly, there are no more isolated blocks and the negative impact is small. But then, a bug on March 14 was exploited to attack, resulting in 410 of the 780 nodes dropped, recovering after 24 hours; on April 24, 70% of the BU nodes crashed due to memory leaks; 5 On the 8th of the month, it was attacked again, and about 70% of the BU nodes were dropped. (https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin_Unlimited)

The three major failures of the system caused almost everyone to lose confidence in the BU. The community sentiment turned sharply, and a large number of neutrals turned to support Core. Yuchi began voting for SegWit in April, and SegWit's computing support also exceeded 30%. The firm expansion team once again lost the bitcoin development version that can be countered and was once again in trouble.

Eight, New York Consensus: The Last Compromise

In March 2017, the bull market started, password currency transactions were active, and bitcoin congestion and handling fees soared.

Under normal circumstances, in order to ensure that a transaction is confirmed in about 10 minutes, the memory pool size of Bitcoin storage unconfirmed transactions should be within 1M, but the memory pool volume in March has reached 74M, reaching 157M at the end of May, and congestion in December. The peak is 285M (https://btc.com/stats/unconfirmed-tx). In other words, a new transaction in March has to wait for 74 10 minutes on average, that is, 12 hours to confirm, waiting for 24 hours to confirm at the end of May, and an average of 2 days and 2 nights in December!

In January 2016, the transaction fee when the block was not full was only 0.58 yuan per month. Due to congestion, each transaction fee rose to 6.60 yuan in March 2017; it rose to 19.81 yuan in June; the highest peak in December reached 224 yuan per pen! (https://btc.com/stats) This does not include the direction of the mine pool to package a transaction, the "acceleration fee" of up to thousands of dollars. Dell, Microsoft, and Steam, which have accepted bitcoin payments, have given up bitcoin payments.

Faced with congestion and high fees, traders in the market, especially arbitrage traders, have turned to ETH, XRP and LTC for transfers.

From March to June 2017, the price of ETH soared from $13 to $385, nearly 30 times; XRP nearly 53 times in three months; LTC also turned 7.5 times; BTC only doubled during the same period. (https://bitinfocharts.com/en/comparison/price-btc-eth-ltc-xrp.html) BTC market capitalization fell from 85% in early March to 39% in mid-June, while ETH is now Achieve the highest 31%. (https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/)

Some people blame the expansion of the 2017 BTC market on the expansion side, especially due to the emergence of BCH. However, in June 2017, Bitcoin Unlimited has failed and BCH has not yet appeared. The loss of absolute advantage in the bitcoin market was entirely caused by the failure of expansion, and congestion and high transaction fees drove the users away.

Expansion, no time to delay!

In order to break the deadlock, Barry Silbert, founder of Bitcoin's Digital Money Group (DCG), stood out at this critical moment. He launched a series of one-to-one communication with major companies and developer representatives in the industry, mediating and softening the parties. Position, it is planned to hold a consensus meeting in New York in May.

Blockstream CEO Adam Back also promised to participate in face-to-face negotiations. However, Adam was "severely blocked by another partner" before his trip, and announced his refusal to participate in the New York meeting. He switched to Bitstream China (BTCC) to transfer to Blockstream's Samson Mow (缪永权) in April. However, Yu Yongquan’s reputation in the industry was poor. He was transferred to Blockstream during the difficult time of BTCC, and spread Purse to receive Wu Jihan’s $300,000 (https://m.8btc.com/article/124131), which was questioned by Wu Gang in public. As a result, some important companies claim that if Samson Mow attends, they will withdraw from the meeting, and for this reason, host Barry refuses to attend Samson. The New York meeting was held without the attendance of Blockstream and Core.

At the New York meeting on May 21, 2017, representatives from 58 companies from 22 countries including mining, exchanges, wallets, and browsers throughout the industry chain attended the conference. (https://www.lieyunwang.com/archives/416445) As a participant, Wu Jihan detailed the details of the New York meeting in the ten questions of Wang Feng one year later. (https://www.huoxing24.com/newsdetail/2018061517234807956.html)

The focus of the discussion in the New York meeting is: whether SegWit activation should be bound to hard fork expansion, so that both can be carried out simultaneously.

In order to balance Core's position, Barry intends to represent the Blockstream party who is not present. I hope everyone can agree to activate SegWit first and put the expansion into a position. But most companies on the site require binding together. For example, Bitpay, Blockchain.info, etc. all pointed out that the current bitcoin expansion situation is urgent. If they can't be bundled together, their users will be forced to pay high fees, and they must support other password currencies, such as Ethereum. Some companies also said that if they can't reach an effective agreement that conditions are bound to each other today, they will immediately leave. They said that Core has refused to implement the Hong Kong consensus. Why do we have to repeat a Hong Kong consensus in New York?

Representatives of Bitfury also participated in the talks. Bitfury has always supported the block position, but surprisingly, the representative of Bitfury is extremely supportive of the binding to expand together. The representative believed that if so many companies reached a consensus, a few Core's extreme blockmakers couldn't do anything, and Bitcoin expansion would certainly succeed.

Finally, the representatives present at the scene formed a consensus, ready to implement the SegWit+2M binding expansion program, which is later known as SegWit2X. However, a tiny technical detail has once again changed the development of the situation.

Delegates reached the New York Consensus (SegWit2X) on May 21 and decided to support SegWit2X in the 4th place of the power-voting byte. On the 22nd, Barry formed the document and collected more support and signatures, so the major developers and companies that did not participate in the meeting also learned about the content of the consensus agreement.

However, on the evening of the 22nd, before the consensus agreement was released to the public, Core developer James Hillard pre-emptively submitted a BIP91 proposal, which agreed to reduce the original 95% of the SegWit implementation proposed by Core without block expansion. The voting threshold is reduced to 80% and can be adjusted according to the situation. The key is that the power vote flag is also set to bit-4! (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0091.mediawiki)

More importantly, the implementation of the SegWit soft fork and 2M expansion hard forks agreed by the New York Consensus is chronological. The SegWit soft fork is implemented first, and the hard fork is expanded to 2M two months later. BIP91, like the first half of the New York Consensus, activates the SegWit soft fork, but the BIP91 does not have the 2M hard fork expansion. With the same voting position, some Blockstream supporters can pretend to vote according to the New York consensus, and then SegWit will declare that they support BIP91 instead of the New York Consensus, and then oppose 2M hard fork expansion. Later, some New York consensus signers, such as Yuchi, did, and Yuki Wang Chun even publicly claimed that the New York Consensus was signed to "scam"!

Blocking expansion by various means is what Blockstream has been doing, but why are miners who are deceived by the Hong Kong Consensus still supporting Blockstream? A very important reason should be the technical failure of Bitcoin Unlimited.

For technical security, many people prefer Core and Blocksteam to continue to dominate the development of Bitcoin. For example, Pan Zhiyi, who later left the technology core of Bitland, clearly expressed his approval for the expansion in the live broadcast, but the BU technology is too bad, so it still supports Core. This was the more common view at the time. As for the split between BTC and BCH, many people gradually accept Core's cell block and settlement network logic, no longer advocate expansion, which is a follow-up.

During the New York Consensus period after the collapse of Bitcoin Unlimited, the bitcoin community sentiment was undergoing dramatic changes. Some of them were more determined to support block expansion and no longer believe in compromise. Some people are more determined to support Core and SegWit, but most people I am tired of the expansion of the dispute, I hope to end the dispute as soon as possible, resolutely oppose the split, maintain the unity of bitcoin, and protect the hard-won big bull market.

In this change, the New York Consensus has no Core participation, two lack of technical advantages, three 2M expansion is insecure and may still lead to split. This consensus is very fragile, and now it is doomed to fail.

Nine, the shadow of the fork

The direct cause of the splitting of Bitcoin and the birth of BCH is the vulnerability of the New York Consensus, and there is no more feasible consensus expansion plan. But the root cause is the ever-expanding community division after the expansion of the dispute, and the community split is a major divergence in the direction of bitcoin development.

In 2011, Gavin divided the management of Bitcoin development into four other developers. In 2014, he withdrew from development management and focused on development. However, in 2015, he pushed forward to expand, which indicates that he has had major differences with Core.

As the actual capacity of the block continued to approach 1M, Core's procrastination tactics were gradually seen after the two expansion conferences ended in 2015. Roger and other strong expansion supporters established an independent r/btc forum, and held a series of Core-independent expansion meetings in June, August, September, and November 2016. For details, see the website http:// Www.onchainscaling.com. David R. Allen and Alice played an important role in coordinating and organizing these meetings, and they were later important coordinators of BCH's foreign communities.

At these meetings, development teams such as Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin Unlimited, and Bitcoin ABC continued to communicate, discuss, and collaborate to drive capacity expansion, with Bitcoin Unlimited having a greater impact. The first meeting in June 2016 was attended by Roger Ver, Jeff Garzik, Emin Gun Sirer, Peter Rizun, Andrew Clifford and Amaury Sechet. Wu Jihan participated in the meeting on November 30, 2016.

In February 2017, onchainscaling.com turned to the new website, thefutureofbitcoin.com, which inherits the original expansion direction but has a broader perspective. It can be said that there has been a divergence from the expansion of Core to the development direction.

At these meetings, many people suggested that splitting or splitting might be a better way to solve problems. The Chinese community knows very little about these meetings. However, in December 2016, Liu Chang’s “The Expansion and the Political and Economic Prospects of Bitcoin” (https://www.8btc.com/article/113497) analyzed technical, economic, political, and ideological differences. Later, I believe that the root of the differences between the two sides is the direction and the line of the dispute, the fork is a better solution. Liu Chang emphasized that "a decentralized organization must never be divided, and it must be as childish as a centralized organization." Jiang Zall also agrees with this view. This coincides with the evolution of foreign expansion conferences.

On the other hand, after experiencing the XT, Classic, Hong Kong Consensus and New York Consensus, it is a well-recognized fact that Blockstream and Core developers will never accept hard-forked block expansion. The division of fear in the community has always seemed inevitable.

Although block expansion once became a community consensus, the failure of BU caused significant losses to the expansion efforts. Some mining companies have turned to support Core. However, the most powerful mining industry and the heaviest assets of the mainland, Wu Jihan from the Hong Kong Consensus to Bitcoin Unlimited and the New York Consensus, have become one of the most determined supporters of expansion, especially in the era of universal acceptance of "power is power". . In addition, the Jiangzhuoerlebit mining pool and the Yanghaipo Viabtc mining pool, as well as Roger's bitcoin.com mining pool, are firmly supporting expansion. The expansion team has a clear advantage in terms of computing power.

The failure of BU enhances the community foundation of Core and SegWit. In April 2017, the Wright main chain successfully deployed SegWit, which verified that SegWit can be deployed securely. In early April, Gregory Maxwell publicly claimed that the reverse engineering of "a manufacturer" ASIC mining chip showed that it secretly used the patented AsicBoost technology, which is not compatible with the soft fork deployment SegWit. He believes that this "interprets some puzzling behaviors of some people in the mining ecosystem." (https://www.8btc.com/article/139051) This is obviously a bit of mainland China and Wu Jihan. These two things have increased the support of Core and SegWit and questioned the motivation of Bitland to support expansion.

As SegWit has matured and the block expansion Core and the expansion team can't compromise, the community's call for deploying SegWit is getting higher and higher. The New York Consensus first SegWit and 2M expansion is also achieved in this context, which is an important reason for compromise.

In this context, the support of the UASF (user-activated soft fork, BIP148) that pushes the power of voting to push SegWit is getting higher and higher. But Blockstream CTO Gregory Maxwell (https://www.8btc.com/article/139051) and Bitland Wu Jihan are against the UASF. The reason is the same: regardless of the power of intention to set the time to activate SegWit in the node, it may cause hard fork, that is, split into two chains.

The number of nodes supporting UASF is growing rapidly

The biggest threat from the UASF is the expansion. In the first half of the expansion, Gavin's expansion was defeated by the lack of strong support from the mining industry. The second half finally gained the firm support of the mining industry. Once the UASF was bypassed, the block expansion was hopeless.

To this end, with the date of the UASF's mandatory implementation of SegWit on August 1, 2017, Bituland announced on June 14 that the UASF emergency plan UAHF (user activated hard fork), that is, once the UASF is implemented, will be immediately Implementing UAHF hard forks increases the block capacity limit. For most people who are afraid of forks, it can be described as overcast. (https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148/; https://www.8btc.com/article/130581)

Ten, the birth of BCH

After the failure of BU, the hope of the expansion party is mainly based on the SegWit2x solution of the New York Consensus. The SegWit2X project is led by BitGo CEO Mike Belshe, the original Core core developer, the 2010 expansion issue, and Jeff Garzik, who founded Bitcoin Classic with Gavin, is the main developer.

On June 17, 2017, New York Consensus Convenor Barry Silbert tweeted that 80% of the calculations supported the New York Consensus. China Mining and Exchange also held a roundtable during the blockchain summit in Chengdu, reaching a consensus to support SegWit2X, including Bitland Ant Pool, Btc.top, Coin, BTCC Pool, Fish Pond (F2pool), Fire Coin (huobi), currency line (okcoin), Viabtc, currency network (BW), 1Hash, Canoe, Batpool, currency look, etc. (https://www.8btc.com/article/130844)

However, the New York Consensus first implemented the SegWit soft fork, and after two months, the hard forks expanded the block capacity to compromise, and the UASF voice that bypassed the power vote, which brought a big deal to the consensus on the New York consensus. Certainty. This is the fundamental reason why Bitumin has proposed UAHF to warn the UASF to prevent the New York Consensus from following the Hong Kong consensus.

On June 30th, 2017, the key meeting of the expansion series conference, The Futrue of Bitcoin Conference, was held in Arnhem, the Netherlands. The speakers were from BU (2 people), Bitgo, Bitcoin XT, Blockchair, Bitprim, Parity, Yours, Bitcrust, Gocoin, etc., as well as Amaury Sechet and Antony Zegers, two developers of Bitcoin and Kitcoin ABC. (https://www.thefutureofbitcoin.com)

During the Arnhem meeting, Amaury of Bitcoin ABC took out a new version of Bitcoin that could implement UAHF and simply expand the capacity to 8M. This version was highly valued by participants, especially Wu Jihan. After the meeting, Armaury, Wu Jihan, Yang Haipo, BU, Roger and others discussed the decision to implement UAHF in this version in case of failure of the New York consensus.

In mid-July, Yang Haipo proposed the BCH fork in the Bitcoin Unlimited WeChat group established by Lightning Huang Shiliang, which was supported by the majority. But the difficulty lies in where the mining power comes from after the fork. This is the cost of real money. I have considered using the hot ICO method to raise funds. Liu Chang did not agree with ICO and thought that it was not easy to price and measure the return on investment. He suggested that Yang Haipo first opened BCH futures on his micro-bit exchange to form prices, and there were prices and sales markets, and there would be miners mining.

On July 22, Yang Haipo opened BCH futures at the Weibitt Exchange, BCH supporters went to buy, BCH opponents went to sales, and the price quickly formed. Since other exchanges do not support BCH transactions, users flooded into the microbit exchange, making it the third-largest exchange after Firecoin and OKcoin. Since the BCH has a price, other exchanges and wallets have to separate the BCH from the user, and then go online to the BCH transaction pair.

By August 1, 2017, a stable trading market for BCH has been formed. As Viabtc dug out the first BCH block, then Jiang Zall's BTC.top and Bitcoin Ant Tank were also added to the mining, and BCH was born.

Later, some people criticized Wu Jiuchhan for betraying the New York Consensus. Half of this judgment was misunderstood and half was a malicious attack. The Arnhem meeting and all parties preparing for the BCH support the New York Consensus, and the main hope for expansion is pinned on Jeff's SegWit2X. The intention of the BCH fork is to prevent the New York Consensus from failing. Bitcoin deviates from the world currency route and names Bitcoin Cash. It is precisely this that there is no competition for BTC naming. Also, the BCH incorporates replay protection, marking its transactions as a different type than BTC, preventing confusion on the bitcoin system. In other words, BCH is a backup solution for the New York Consensus and is not an attack or replacement of BTC.

In fact, BCH futures went public on July 22, 2017, and completed the fork on August 1. The price of BTC rose from 15,600 on July 19 to 19,300, while the price of BCH was around 3,000. That is to say, the emergence of BCH has neither attacked BTC on the network nor negatively affected the price. The price of a BTC held before the fork increased from 15,300 yuan to 22,300, that is, 19,300 BTC plus 0.3. Wan BCH.

In contrast, the UASF without replay protection and the BSV fork after one year are more harmful to the system security and the market, because this will cause transaction confusion on the two chains after the fork, resulting in user property loss. On July 12, 2017, Core released a warning that UASF may cause confusion in the fork (https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/blob/e0d90536f059a39c939c743f2ce39fdcb60ae96d/_alerts/2017-07-12 -potential-split.md), BTC prices fell from 16,500 to 13,200, a drop of 20%. On November 15th, 2018, CSW launched a power battle against BCH, eventually splitting out the BSV, without replay protection, threatening to make BCH unusable for two years, causing BCH price to plummet from 4,263 yuan to 597 yuan, and driving the entire cryptocurrency The market fell to the bottom.

By the way, on June 30, 2017, CSW also suddenly appeared at the meeting in Arnhem, the Netherlands. He strongly supported the Bitcoin Unlimited route against Segwit and said it would raise 20% of the computing power of the entire network to be a non-Segwit pool for interfering with Segwit or hard forks in a BTC main chain without a chain of Segwit. (https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/30930715) This aggressive route did not receive a response. He did not participate in the launch of BCH. BCH did not appear in the BCH community after running for a while.

It is certain that the BCH born before the failure of the New York Consensus, whether from the motive or the actual impact, is not an attack on the BTC main chain, but a backup against the failure of the New York Consensus, and the BTC will no longer perform block expansion after the SegWit goes online. The plan, which was called "prepared tires" by supporters at the time, is not without reason. When the New York consensus was revealed, and the expansion of the BTC block was hopeless, a large number of expansionists turned to BCH.

Eleven, forked coins and BCH stigma

Since the birth of BCH, it has been subjected to stigma attacks. The earliest attack was mainly because some people saw the fork as an attack on BTC. In the words of the two treasures, the "forking" of the BTC is "rape", and the later series of forked coins are "gang rape."

Interestingly, before the birth of BCH, Core's supporter, Lightning Mining Machine founder Liao Xiang regarded Wu Jihan's UAHF as an attack on the main chain, claiming that Wu Jihan dared to fork BTC, he would fork Wu Ji The new chain of cold, and organized the team to start splitting. However, after seeing the BCH fork, the total price of BTC and BCH did not fall and rose, Liao Xiang turned sharply, and turned to BTC to establish BTG, and pre-digging 200,000 BTG listing (http://finance.ifeng .com/a/20171023/15740653_0.shtml).

In Liao Xiang's propaganda on BTG, the meaning of the fork is abrupt, and the BTG forked BTC is no longer an attack, but a competitor of the BCH, maintaining the orthodoxy of the BTC. Liao Xiang took advantage of the large number of Core supporters to get a lot of profit in the bull market, creating a series of pre-cut forks.

On the one hand, these forks are pre-excavated for profit. On the one hand, they all claim to be supporters of the BTC, and at the same time attack the BCH that was not pre-excavated and expanded due to expansion, attacking Wu Jihan. In addition to BTG Liao Xiang, there are also LBTC's point-paying Zhang Yinhai. "In the view of the founder of LBTC and the founder of BTG, Liao Xiang and others, splitting the BTC to produce BCH is the result of Wu Jihan and Bitumin's interests in maintaining its own mines." (https://www.blockob.com /posts/info/2503) This is one of the early sources of BCH misunderstanding and continues to this day.

In the 2018 bear market, Liao Xiang announced that the BTG was returned to the community, and other forked coins gradually disappeared. Among them, the famous LBTC except Zhang Yinhai and Li Xiaolai pre-excavated 210,000 SBTC (Super Bitcoin).

Regarding the long-term misunderstanding of BCH, in addition to thinking that BCH attacked BTC and believed that BCH initiators betrayed the New York Consensus, the most widely circulated is to regard BCH as the cryptocurrency created by bitter typhoon Wu Jihan, thus calling BCH Cold coins, "mines," "company coins," even "ChinaCoin," and so on.

Looking back at the difficult expansion history, it is not difficult to understand that BCH is actually a product of the growth of the expansion from Gavin. With the congestion of BTC and the increase of transaction fees, more and more people are aware of the importance of block expansion. Expansion. After experiencing XT, Gavin, Hong Kong consensus, and BU's repeated setbacks, it formed a firm expansion. The emergence of BCH as a New York consensus backup program is the result of the joint promotion of the expansion.

After the opening of BCH futures and spot trading, especially after the failure of the New York Consensus, the domestic and foreign firm expansionists turned to support BCH, such as Roger, Gavin and others. This brings continuous buying to BCH, pushes prices to continue to rise, attracts computing power to mine, and then drives ecological development. This made BCH the mainstream currency of the top four in the market in a short time.

Foreign large-capital holders in foreign countries, including Roger, Checksum0 and other BTC holders, have played a key role in the exchange of BCH. This is the result of the market comprehensive game, not the result of the “Bit Continental Pull”. Wu Jihan or Yang Haipo are unable to control the market. They just take advantage of the trend and do what they can at the critical moment of market and situation development. That part is integrated into the collective action of the firm expansionist.

Although Wu Jihan himself became a firm expansionist before and after the Hong Kong consensus, he did not intend to create a new currency to replace BTC, nor was it a decision maker of BCH. The main basis is:

1) Wu Jihan has never opposed SegWit. After the birth of BCH, he still mainly supports the New York Consensus SegWit2X;

2) After the implementation of SegWit, the advantage of Bitcoin's mining machine on BTC was not affected. Gregorg did not break the logic of Bitland's strong expansion of AsicBoost because it was not compatible with SegWit;

3) After the failure of the New York Consensus, Bitcoin was crowned with a “mineral fighter” capable of controlling more than 51% of the computing power, but never launched a power attack on the BTC. Even the BSV that attacks the BCH wildly has only the power defense. Without a power attack;

4) Wu Jihan has always advocated that “BTC is BTC, BCH is BCH” and advocates their own development, which is not mainstream in the BCH community for a long time. After the failure of the New York Consensus, most BCH supporters believe that BCH is the real bitcoin.

5) In 2017-2018, Wu Jihan proposed that “improved block time” and “mining pumping and raising fund” have not received wide support and have not been implemented.

Therefore, the so-called "Knocking Cold Coins", "Mine Bad Coins", and "Company Coins" are serious misunderstandings and are important manifestations of BCH stigma. These misunderstandings are mainly caused by:

1) The dispute of expansion is extremely complicated. It is difficult for outsiders to see the whole picture. People see that Wu Jihan has proposed UAHF, Yang Haipo Exchange takes the lead in launching BCH futures, and Viabtc mines dig out the first block, which is easy to label BCH. ;

2) Opposition forks, opposition block expanders and Core supporters are happy to tag and smear BCH to attack expansionists and fork supporters;

3) BCH brings unexpected impacts and even losses to exchanges and wallets lacking fork experience. For example, merchants who sell BTC for financial management need to compensate users for BCH, which has a large loss in the bull market and resentment against BCH. .

4) Enterprises or individuals with commercial interests in Bitland also attacked Bitian and Wu.

For most people, the most important reason is that the expansion of the dispute is too complicated. After the community splits, it is more willing and easier to believe the labeling logic circulating in the btc community: "Mine Ba Lapan Mine."

Twelve, BIP91 "smart" wins

As time went by, BCH's stigma left a common misunderstanding: the birth of BCH led to the end of the New York consensus. The more malicious version of this misunderstanding is: Wu Jiuhan betrayed the New York Consensus and led to the failure of the New York Consensus. In fact, the external cause of the failure of the New York Consensus is Core's obstruction of expansion. The internal cause is a compromise of the New York Consensus: First, SegWit, lost the initiative, unable to harden the fork expansion. The rise of BCH is the result of the failure of the New York consensus, not the cause.

On July 1st, the New York Consensus SegWit2x team officially released the "Milestone" public beta version 1.14.3. This version is activated with the bit-4 tag SegWit. After a period of time after SegWit is activated, 2M will be activated automatically. At this point, the "intended" signal support SegWit2x's computing power has reached 84.7%. (https://www.8btc.com/article/132446)

There are three conflicting solutions at this point in time: one is that Core's 95% computing power vote to activate the SegWit solution (BIP141), the other is to bypass the power of voting to activate SegWit's UASF (Bip148) solution, and the third is the New York Consensus first activated. SegWit then activates the 2M expansion of the SegWit2X solution. (https://www.8btc.com/article/132799) By mid-July, Core's Segwit program only had about 30% of the power to vote; the risk of confusion caused by UASF was great, and was opposed by Core and Mining; New York consensus surface On the look, there are obvious advantages.

However, as mentioned earlier, the bit-4 marking the New York Consensus was preempted by James Hillard's BIP91 during the negotiation period, and the New York Consensus shared the bit-4 mark with BIP91. The BIP91 only contains SegWit and does not include 2X expansion. The power of the marker bit-4 can claim to be BIP91, not the New York consensus.

In the end, BIP91 won. In the words of Yong Yongquan, James Hillard became a "savior", and he proposed a "smart" solution – BIP91: 80% of the power vote can activate SegWit, and keep Bitcoin intact. (https://www.8btc.com/article/139051) The word "ingenious" seems more like a "conspiracy" in the expansionist school. It uses the compromise of the New York Consensus, and uses BIP91 to conceal the power to vote, first activate SegWit. Then, to prevent 2M hard fork expansion, that is, Yuki Wang pure so-called "scam". This is exactly what the firm expansion team has to guard against UAHF and BCH.

On July 20th, the bit-4 voter reached the goal of BIP91, BIP91 was locked and activated two days later. At the beginning of August, the support rate of BIP141 also reached 100%. SegWit was locked on August 9. At this point, the real test of the New York Consensus, the confrontation with Core to promote 2M hard fork expansion, has just begun.

On July 3rd after the release of the SegWit2X public beta, Core developer Luke Dashjr declared that SegWit2X was a delay to SegWit and would eventually fail. He said, "The block capacity of 4 to 8MB is meaningless. Even a 1MB block is very dangerous for Bitcoin. In any case, he will not agree with hard forks, but with soft Bifurcation to ensure the rationality of the block capacity. But even then, he will not support this solution (SegWit2x)," he supports BIP148 (UASF). (https://www.8btc.com/article/132553)

On August 2, Adam Back thought that SegWit2X should be postponed for six months, and that SegWit and Lightning Network should be fully promoted in order to avoid bifurcation. (https://www.8btc.com/article/136053)

On August 10th, according to the news, the SegWit2X client will no longer support the SegWit2X node, and the node running SegWit2X will not be able to connect to the Core 0.15.0 node, given that the SegWit activation is locked. (https://www.8btc.com/article/136941) This is a very extreme practice, the blow to SegWit2X is fatal, because if the Core version remains mainstream, then the SegWit2X mine, wallet, exchange, etc. will be running Unable to connect to Bitcoin network.

In mid-August, the New York Consensus SegWit2X development team announced that it plans to implement 2M hard fork expansion at block height 494784. The actual time is about November 17. Since then, the attack against SegWit2X has become more intense. (https://www.8btc.com/article/137689)

On August 17th Bitpay released a simple blog post "Download btc1" (btc1 is the name of the SegWit2X beta version), which was heavily criticized by lightning network creator Tadge Dryja and Bitcoin Core contributor John Newbery. To this end, bitcoin.com bitcoin.org removed bitpay from the web. (https://www.8btc.com/article/138471)

On the same day, Bitcoin Core removed the main developer of SegWit2X, Jeff Garzik, in the Github codebase. Core developer Peter Todd explained that this is because Jeff Garzik opposed Core's position on the expansion issue and has never made an important contribution to the code base since 2014. Jeff Garzik believes that his delisting at this critical node is a revenge for his support for SegWit2X. (https://www.8btc.com/article/138493)

After the SegWit was activated, the struggle between the two sides of the expansion was heated up. Given the broad support that SegWit2X has received and the tough attitude of Core, especially the extreme measures of Core 0.15.0, many people believe that if the New York Consensus implements 2M expansion as planned in November, the Bitcoin network will once again fork. To this end, the community once again filled the panic of division.

Thirteen, the collapse of the New York Consensus

In fact, when SegWit was activated, the New York Consensus SegWit2X had failed. SegWit2X was originally a compromise for Core supporters in order not to split the community. Before SegWit is activated, the expansion party can also use SegWit as a negotiation condition for 2M. Since SegWit has been activated, what do you need to exchange for hard fork 2M support? There is no exchangeable capital. If you insist on 2X, you can only split. Then the consensus foundation of "no division" will collapse. Therefore, the failure of the New York Consensus has become inevitable!

After SegWit was activated, faced with a tough attitude, control code base, official website and core forum supporters, coupled with fear of fork, the seemingly mainstream New York consensus began to collapse. On August 24th, Bitwala, the company that signed the New York Consensus, announced that it no longer supports the New York Consensus and opposes a hard fork from Core's blockchain version. (https://www.8btc.com/article/138792)

To alleviate the community's fear of fork, Jeff Garzik emphasized that SegWit2x's goal is to upgrade Bitcoin to become Bitcoin instead of creating a coin. In the face of the huge community pressure brought by the fear of fork, SegWit2X made another important compromise: the selective replay protection was added to the btc1 version of Github and it was recommended to write to the code base. This proposal has been criticized for being useless. (https://www.8btc.com/article/138791) This compromise and its failure is a very bad omen for SegWit2X.

At the end of August and early September, most companies that signed the New York Consensus still supported SegWit2X. On August 28th, bitpay announced support for SegWit2X (https://www.8btc.com/article/138938), and BTCC and Bitfury also said they still support SegWit2X. But Slush Pool co-founder Marek Palatinus said they were reluctant to make a decision because of fear of a hard fork. (https://www.8btc.com/article/139358)

At this critical point, there have been repeated attempts to support SegWit and expansion (https://www.8btc.com/article/124758), and the fish tank (F2Pool) that signed the New York Consensus once again announced anti-go. He sent an e-mail to the Bitcoin portal Coindesk claiming that "I don't support Segwit2x hard forks." Although the power pool's computing power is in a rapid decline, its position as the largest mine has been an important influence. The collapse of the New York Consensus is accelerating. (https://www.8btc.com/article/139358)

On September 15th, Bitcoin Core 0.15.0 was officially released. SegWit2X nodes are not supported. The showdown time is up. All nodes must choose between Core and SegWit2X.

In opposition to SegWit2X, Core supporters launched the No2X campaign. Liteco coin founder Charli Lee opposed SegWit2X and announced on September 30 that he would like to change the 250BTC of SegWit2X to the 250BTC of No2X. Roger Ver, a staunch supporter of SegWit2X, announced the acceptance of the offer. And accepted the same offer of the other three, a total of 1000BTC. (https://www.8btc.com/article/141927)

After September 4, 2017, the domestic exchange suffered from Waterloo, and Bitfinex in Hong Kong became the largest exchange. In response to the upcoming bitcoin split, on October 5th, bitfinex followed Viabtc's BCH fork futures, announcing the on-line fork currency futures bt1 (core version) and bt2 (SigWit2X version). (https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/221)

With the experience of BCH forks, many companies have a neutral attitude toward possible forks, announcing that they will protect the interests of users in the fork and recognize various forks. On October 8th Coinbase announced that it supports all bitcoins that SegWit2x hard forks, and will not announce the choice of naming before hard forks. (https://www.8btc.com/article/142036) SPV Wallet Bread also indicated that the decision will be given to the user. (https://www.8btc.com/article/142643)

To this end, bitcoin official website Bitcoin.org publicly condemned the company that supports SegWit2X, warned of the risk of hard forks, and listed a “blacklist” covering many well-known companies around the world, including:

Abra, Bitcoin.com, BitPay, BitPesa, Blockchain.info, BTC.com (Bitland), Circle, Coinbase, Coins.ph, GoCoin, Jaxx, Luno, Ripo, Unocoin, Xapo, ANX, Bitex, bitFlyer, Bitso, BTCC (Bitcoin China), BTER.com, Coinbase, Coins.ph, CryptoFacilities, Korbit, Safello, SFOX, ShapeShift, 1Hash, Bitcoin.com, Bitfury, Bitmain (Bitland), Bixin.com (Coin Letter), Genesis Mining, ViaBTC, Bitangel.com, BitClub Network, Bloq, Civic, Decentral, Digital Currency Group, Filament, Genesis Global Trading, Grayscale Investments, MONI, OB1, Netki, Purse, Veem.

Bitcoin.org not only warns of the risk of stability caused by hard forks, but also emphasizes that once SegWit2X is hard forked, service providers that support SegWit2X "exit the Bitcoin system." (https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2017-10-09-segwit2x-safety)

Fourteen, the end of the New York Consensus

By the end of October, SegWit2X project leader Bitgo's Mike Belshe and main developer Jeff Garzik said that SegWit2X hard fork expansion is pushing forward (https://www.8btc.com/article/138812; https://www. 8btc.com/article/143778) According to the plan to implement SegWit2X in mid-November, companies have to prepare for the split plan. The most difficult part is, once split, which chain and currency are named Core0.15 and SegWit2X (BTC1). Bitcoin (bitcoin).

On October 23, Coinbase issued an announcement stating that it would temporarily name SegWit2X as bitcoin2x. If the latter is widely accepted by "users", it will be named bitcoin. But it was quickly changed to "name the chain with the most difficulty in mining as bitcoin". This change is not difficult to understand, because the "user" decision is a very vague concept, "drilling difficulty" is a more specific standard, in line with the white paper's longest chain principle. Bitpay, Shapeshift, Xapo, etc. also announced support for this standard. Their position was fiercely attacked by r/bitcoin users, so that Shapeshift CEO Erik Voorhess believed that he was being persecuted by r/bitcoin. BTCC CEO Bobby Lee and Coinable, Xapo and other companies also expressed support for SegWit2X. Li Qiyuan’s views were sharply criticized by his younger brother, Charlie Lee.
(https://www.8btc.com/article/143695, https://www.8btc.com/article/142317, https://www.8btc.com/article/144322, https://www.8btc .com/article/144491)

OpenBazaar, an e-commerce trading platform that was recognized as a Bitcoin killer application in early November, announced that it no longer supports the New York Consensus (SegWit2X), claiming that the New York Consensus was signed at the time to ensure that SegWit can be deployed as soon as possible. Civic's Vinny Lingham also announced his withdrawal from the New York Consensus on the grounds that he "received a death threat." Daniel Vogel, co-founder of another company that signed the New York deal, also claimed that SegWit2X support is declining. If the support rate is below 50%, this chain should not be dug. (https://www.8btc.com/article/144728) The withdrawal and vacillation of these companies indicates that the foundation of the New York Consensus is collapsing, and the New York Consensus is no longer mainstream.

On November 9, SegWit2X project leader BitGo CEO Mike Belshe announced the suspension of SegWit2X by email: "Unfortunately, it is obvious that we have not been able to establish enough block size upgrade consensus this time. Continue the current route may split the community and Blocking the development of Bitcoin. This is by no means the result of Segwit2x.” Xapo CEO Wences Casares, Bitland Wu Jihan, Bloq CEO Jeff Garzik, Blockchain CEO Peter Smith and Shapeshift CEO Erik Voorhees.

The New York Consensus SegWit2X officially ended.

The root cause of the failure of the New York Consensus (SegWit2X) is the nature of its fragile compromise, which caters to the majority of “no split + expansion”, but does not really shake the community foundation of the Core against block expansion, but instead loses the negotiation card on SegWit. . After the deployment of SegWit, the passive situation of “expansion” must be “split” and eventually lost the support of the community.

The BCH born on August 1, 2017 has little impact on the failure of SegWit2X. Only those who are steadfast in the expansion, a few who believe that the differences are irreconcilable, can accept the split, and the fragile compromise that anticipates the New York consensus will fail, have shifted from the New York Consensus to supporting BCH at the beginning of the BCH. Most of the expansionists, including Wu Jihan, Roger, and Yang Haipo, only use BCH as a backup solution to prevent the failure of the New York consensus. Jiang Zhuoer clearly expressed his support for BCH as a competitive currency, but did not want BCH to distract the power of the New York Consensus. ( https://www.8btc.com/article/134763)

Don't forget that the basis of the New York Consensus is to "expand" under the premise of "no division (no fork)." So the majority of New York consensus supporters are against BCH. For example, Xapo, which supports the New York Consensus to the last famous wallet merchant, announced that it did not support BCH after the birth of BCH, and converted all BCHs for the user's fork to BTC. (https://blog.xapo.com/time-to-convert-your-bitcoin-cash-bch/) This process caused the BCH price to drop by more than 30%.

In fact, during the gradual decline of the New York Consensus from mid-August to early November, BCH did not receive more support, and its price continued to drop from a maximum of 758 US dollars on August 19 to about 320 US dollars in late October, with a close decline. 58%. Only after the beginning of November, the New York consensus collapsed, the BCH price began to rise. On November 9th, SegWit2X announced that it would stop in the three days from November 12, and the price of BCH soared from 625 US dollars to 1,600 US dollars, up 156%. The main reason is that the New York Consensus failed, forcing the minority who can accept the fork and insist on expansion to turn to support BCH. The backup solution becomes the only option for block expansion.

After the failure of the New York Consensus, for most of the supporters, the block does not expand Bitcoin and it is still Bitcoin, and will not support BCH. Only a handful of steadfast expansionists believe that BTC has deviated from the market and the dream of Nakamoto, changed the development route, and turned to BCH. This is a veritable “minority”. From birth to the present, the number of BCH companies and the size of the community are much smaller than BTC. Therefore, it is not the birth of BCH that led to the success or failure of the New York Consensus, and the failure of the New York Consensus created the BCH.

Fifteen, review of the expansion of the dispute

The end of the New York Consensus marks the end of the expansion. Block expansion, the originally recognized simple problem, turned into a war. It was exposed to the public in May 2015 and ended in November 2017. It lasted for two and a half years and it was a long-lasting one.

The earliest representative of the block expansion was Gavin. After Gavin's exit, there are Bitcoin Unlimited, Roger Ver, Mike Belshe, Jeff Garzik, BTCC, Wu Jihan and others (institutions).

The basic proposition of the expansion party is the expansion of the block. The logic is very simple: the growth in demand for bitcoin transactions requires an increase in the block ceiling. In the case of a hundredfold increase in bandwidth and storage, and the rapid growth of trading demand, this appeal is simple and urgent. SW+LN is complex, long, and variable. Block expansion is an urgent task, and others are secondary. To this end, the expansion team can accept 32M, 20M, 8M, 2M, SegWit+2M, and so on. In short, as long as the block is expanded, others can accept it.

The other side of the war is often referred to as the Core. However, there are hundreds of Bitcoin Core developers, and they are not all against expansion. The reason why the opponents of the expansion is called the Core faction is because the voice against expansion has played a decisive role in the collective of Core.

Wladimir van der Laan, the developer who had the permission to merge code at the time, was very cautious and made no decision on the expansion (https://www.8btc.com/article/83362). In the expansion of the dispute, the role is determined, and the key role is Blockstream's CTO Gregory Maxwell, who denounced the Core developers who signed the Hong Kong consensus, leading to the failure of the Hong Kong consensus. Since then, Blockstream CEO Adam Back has been around the New York Consensus Conference and is highly likely to be influenced by Maxwell. Since Adam Back, Gregory Maxwell and two other Core developers have built Blockstream and opposed expansion, Blockstream is also seen as the main body against expansion. However, there are also core developers outside of Blockstream who are firmly opposed to expansion. Like Luke Dashjr.

In any case, Core as a whole from the main voice to the actual action is against block expansion, therefore, it is appropriate to refer to the party that opposes expansion as "Core Pie" (Bitcoin Core and its supporters). Good words to summarize. There are three main reasons why Core has opposed block expansion:

1) Large blocks will reduce the number of full nodes and reduce the system's ability to resist review. The representative of this view is Luke Dashjr, who believes that Bitcoin's block limit should even be reduced to 300K. (https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/ap21s8/mfw_i_read_luke_jr_wants_to_limit_btc_blocks_to/)

2) The risk of hard forks required for block expansion is too great. This is the main basis for Gregory Mexwell's opposition to expansion. For this reason, he also opposed the UASF that could lead to hard forks to bypass the power of voting to upgrade SegWit.

3) Block expansion will hinder Blockstream's out-of-band business expansion. As a commercial company, Blockstream's business positioning is Bitcoin's "sidechain technology." By simply expanding the block to 32M or 8M, the Bitcoin backbone can meet market demand in a few years, and the demand for sidechains is small. Restricted block size is consistent with Blockstream's basic survival logic.

For the first block of block anti-censorship logic, adapting to market demand to expand block capacity, transaction size and community size will grow, commercial profits will naturally stimulate the investment of enterprises or individuals within the ecology, and run a larger node. The benefits of block expansion can fully cover the burden of data growth, especially considering the technological advances and price declines in storage and bandwidth.

For the second hard fork concern, the hard fork upgrade in an emergency is not uncommon in the Bitcoin system. The two-and-a-half-year expansion struggle has far more harm than the hard fork upgrade, especially It is in everyone's interest to expand the hard forks during the 2017 congestion period. There is almost no resistance or risk if you get support from the core.

For the third benefit of Blockstream, the expansion opponents and Blockstream in Core will certainly not recognize it. But for a commercial company that has taken $76 million in commercial financing and is mainly engaged in the development of bitcoin cores without direct reporting, controlling the main chain capacity to obtain sidechain business, this is the company's early profit, return investors, make up Great daily expenses are necessary.

From the strength of both sides, the main source of strength of the expansion is mainly market demand. From May 2015 to October 2017, the market trading demand for Bitcoin has been increasing, especially since March 2017, high congestion and high fees have become the main force driving expansion. Relatively speaking, Gavin's early reputation, the mid-term participation of China's mining industry and the late support of eco-enterprises are secondary forces, and the latter two are actually the result of market forces.

The power of the Core faction comes from several sources:

1) Core's actual control over Bitcoin development;

2) Actual control of community opinion through the official website of bitcointalk, r/bitcoin and bitcoin.org;

3) Centralized organizational capabilities enabled by Blockstream.

4) Core's own technical advantages accumulated in development;

5) The moral advantage that Core volunteers develop;

6) The Bitcoin community follows the orthodox social inertia.

The process of contesting the two forces can be described as ups and downs:

The first phase is the internal period of Core's divergence. Before May 2015, there was a game inside Core that was not well understood by the outside world. Gavin and others who apparently lost the code dominance could not convince Core to expand and produce sharp differences, so that Gavin decided to promote expansion with Bitcoin XT and compete with Core.

The second phase is the period of Gavin-led XT expansion. In May 2015, Gavin publicized the expansion proposal to the community, and went all out to promote expansion. Although it received some support, it encountered severe speech control in bitcointalk and r/bitcoin. At this time, Core took a delaying tactic. Gavin's collaborator Mike saw Core's refusal to expand and control, lost confidence in the decentralized road, and announcing that Bitcoin was dead, causing XT to lose community support. XT expansion failed.

The third stage is the period of Classic expansion that Gavin dominates. Gavin established Bitcoin Classic with Jeff Garzik and Peter Rizun, and gained widespread support from the mining industry. However, because the mining industry is afraid of forks, in exchange for Classic at the expense of Core to support expansion, reach a Hong Kong consensus. Core's decision-making power rejected the Hong Kong consensus, and Gavin failed because of CSW's fake Nakamoto incident. Classic expansion failed.

The fourth stage is the expansion of Bitcoin Unlimited. At this time, Gavin has retired, but the market-driven expansion has basically become a community consensus, and most companies except Blockstream support expansion. However, the flexible expansion of the BU and some new functions are more complicated, and the technical strength is insufficient. Many people who support the expansion are worried about the technology of BU. In the end, BU failed because of four major technical problems and external attacks.

The fifth stage is the New York Consensus SegWit2X expansion period. The expansion consensus is still strong, but the expansion missed the best opportunity, and the New York consensus's first SegWit compromise handed over the last card. To avoid splitting after the implementation of SegWit, the community eventually turned to the tough Core. Bitcoin block expansion ended.

The sixth stage is the coexistence of BTC and BCH double chain. As a by-product of the expansion competition and a backup plan for the New York Consensus, BCH finally carried the dream of expanding the continuation of Nakamoto's point-to-point electronic cash route after the failure of Bitcoin expansion. It suffered widespread misunderstanding, stigma, and labeling. Continue in the harsh environment.

The failure of BTC expansion has also led to major adjustments in the overall crypto-economic landscape. First, in March 2017, due to BTC congestion, exchanges and wallet replenishment transactions turned to ETH, XRP and LTC, resulting in soaring prices of these veteran competitors, and then the funds spilled into such marginal currencies as small ants (now NEO). The wealth effect creates a strong demand for the new currency, stimulating the new chain ICO represented by the quantum chain. The rich effect not only stimulates more public chain ICO, but also spreads from the public chain to various blockchain projects, around June. Come to the ICO myth, and derive the wave of “pass the economy”. After the BCH split, the total price of BTC and BCH rose, which stimulated the wave of IFO forks. The negative impact of ICO and IFO on the financial order led to China's severe supervision in September, resources spilled over abroad, and the rise of domestic currency-free blockchains. These influences actively look at the multi-level and multi-domain exploration of the crypto-economy. Negatively, it weakens the development of decentralized cryptocurrency, and makes the crypto economy fall into the financial speculative bubble, which is not conducive to the construction of the crypto-economic foundation. Focusing on the expansion of the dispute here, no longer analyze.

season finale

From the final result of the expansion battle, the Core faction won the war, the expansion of the Bitcoin block was terminated, and after the completion of the isolation testimony, Bitcoin made full efforts to develop the main chain transaction such as Lightning Network and Liquid. In 2017-2018, the Bitcoin community continues the currency nature of Bitcoin, emphasizing the expansion of the Witness and Lightning Networks. However, after the SegWit expansion effect reached 30%, it was difficult to grow. After the lightning network launched a wave of multi-version wallet launch and torch relay activities, the actual application progress was slow. But it did not prevent the bitcoin price from picking up first in the first half of 2019. At this point, the BTC community finally accepted the route set by the Core Party, completely reversed the functional positioning of Bitcoin, no longer emphasized the expansion, no longer emphasized the currency payment function of BTC, but emphasized the value storage function, which will be called Bitcoin. For "digital gold."

At this point, the splitting of the expansion of the dispute is truly completed: BTC restricts capacity to large-scale investment with value storage as its core function; BCH maintains the goal of decentralized cryptocurrency and continues to cater to market demand and promote payment functions. The favor of investors has pushed up the price of Bitcoin, and the various payment applications of Bitco, Openbazaar and other early Bitcoins have gradually turned to BCH, which is worthwhile. At this point, it will be clearer to see the expansion of the competition: BTC took the name of Bitcoin, but changed the direction of Bitcoin; BCH took the direction of Bitcoin, but lost the name of Bitcoin.

Quote:

[1] This article attempts to restore the history of the expansion of the dispute, the author I agree with the block expansion and bch development direction, in view of the bitcoin community split into three different routes btc, bch, bsv, and listen to it, it is recommended that readers read two documents: based on Core The long-term road to SegWit (https://www.8btc.com/article/139051) written by Yan Yongquan and the "Bitcoin expansion dispute: the birth of double-chain" (https) ://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/30930715).

[2] Nakamoto's white paper cites the contribution of Adam Back.

[3] For comments on core speech control, see: https://medium.com/cryptolinks/the-truth-about-r-bitcoin-and-r-btc-69c4f78b27d0 and https://medium.com/@johnblocke/ R-bitcoin-censorship-revisited-58d5b1bdcd64

[4] Bitcoin's official website Bitcoin.org's actual control rights are in the hands of @Cobra, which was a supporter of core before 2017. However, in the second half of 2017, he began to criticize Core's autocracy and turned to the neutrality of BTC and BCH.

[5] Bitcoin Core Chief Developer Wladimir van der Laan also supports the Hong Kong Consensus Program, but is not sure whether the political differences on hard forks can be resolved. ( https://www.8btc.com/article/81247 )

[6] A year later, CSW gave a new explanation for his inability to use Nakamoto's early coins. These coins were entrusted to the so-called Tulip Trust and could not be used. Later, BSV supporters believed that CSW had 1 million. The basis of this Cong early currency.

[7] For the analysis of fake signatures, see Shuai Chu's article, "What does Craig Wright need to do to convince everyone that he is Nakamoto? ( https://www.8btc.com/article/88450 ), and on November 16, 2018, CSW supporters once again spread the signature of Nakamoto, and once again proved to be forged, see "Gregory Maxwell: CW again forged Nakamoto Satoshi Signature ( https://www.8btc.com/article/312706 )

[8] The organization of BU can be found at: https://www.8btc.com/article/114897

[9] The word "Satoshi's Vision" in Nakamoto's vision is at least here. In November 2018, after being defeated by CSW and its sponsor Calvin as a battle for BCH leadership, the new version of the split was named Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV).

[10] This is the Core expansion plan emphasized by some people. As mentioned in the previous article, this is not the focus of debate. For the block expansion party, it is urgent to meet the market demand through simple block expansion, and continue on this basis. Promote SW+LN to achieve multi-level expansion. The “expansion” in the “expansion of expansion” refers to the increase in block size restrictions.

[11] Liu Chang used a detailed analysis of the series of fundamental differences between the two sides in "The Expansion of the Battle and the Political and Economic Prospects of Bitcoin." ( https://www.8btc.com/article/113497 )

[12] At that time, the abbreviation was BCC, and there was a Core powder called “蹦擦擦”. Everyone felt that it was catchy. Later, it was discovered that some exchanges had already launched a sub-currency currency abbreviated as BCC, so the community decided to change to BCH.

[13] Liu Chang, the author of this article, holds this view. Unfortunately, Weibo, which has published relevant opinions, has been unable to reach it.

Author: Chang with paper starting Babbitt information.

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