Nakamoto Satoshi (middle): Bitcoin is not the whole blockchain, innovation is the future

This article is the last one: " Zhong Bencong's curse: There is no mainstream currency, only bitcoin and the altcoin that will disappear in the end?" 》

The enthusiasm for people to pursue gold jewelry has not diminished for thousands of years, perhaps because it is both beautiful and valuable, and the price of jewelry depends on the cost of materials. The consensus of most people has continued for thousands of years. In modern times, a jewellery brand called Pandora has sold silver jewelry at a price that broke the consensus. Why?

For a long time, many people in the outside world have confused the blockchain and bitcoin. They believe that bitcoin is a blockchain and has formed a big "consensus". In fact, many people only know bitcoin. It is rare to hear about the existence of other cryptocurrencies. Once you hear someone else talking about a strange name, the first consciousness naturally thinks that this is a "cottage".

However, as time goes by, more and more competitors enter people's sights. Will one day suddenly a “Pandora Box” be opened to correct and break this “consensus”?

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01 bitcoin's own bondage

The genius design of Bitcoin's payment system has brought many excellent features that have never been seen before, which is recognized.

However, under the very limited Internet infrastructure conditions 10 years ago, the ingenious design made many restrictions to ensure that the system was sufficiently safe and decentralized, and its expansion was almost locked. In other words, the design of the Bitcoin system was actually subject to the constraints of infrastructure and technical conditions at the time.

for example:

When humans first invented the car, the road was narrow, and the car's design of the wheel, the body, the engine's power source, and the technical conditions at that time greatly limited its speed. Thus, the first car in 1886 had a speed of only 15 kilometers per hour. However, in modern times, the technical conditions are no problem, the roads are wide, the infrastructure is also very developed, and many countries have no longer speed limit on the highways, and people's needs are becoming more diverse, and various types of cars are beginning to serve. Humanity.

Under the background of the technological revolution in which the underlying technology of blockchain has been excavated to generate heat, people expect that blockchain technology can meet the urgent needs in various fields. Although some people think that Bitcoin only needs to be good at its digital gold, it turns out that the whole Bitcoin community is good, and the community that forks out is also good. They are all worried about the future of Bitcoin. It is an indisputable fact. The most worrying thing about the Bitcoin community is that Bitcoin has shrunk in the market value of the entire cryptocurrency.

In fact, the Bitcoin community has long been aware that the technology solution of 10 years ago is not enough in terms of performance or scalability. If it does not seek change, its leading edge will gradually be replaced by the latecomers. It is precisely because of the anxiety of the community that there is limited isolation, enhanced scalability to pave the way for the lightning network, and BCH forks that support large block expansion.

In "Zhong Bencong's curse: there is no mainstream currency, only bitcoin and the altcoin that will disappear", we also mentioned that the second layer of Bitcoin, in addition to the lightning network, has two more well-known sides. One of the chains, RSK, is to be a smart contract platform running on the Bitcoin network to meet the needs of more people. It was once called the “King of the Kings” project.

Although RSK has roughly completed the technical implementation of the white paper, its development has been more than 3 years, and the progress is quite slow. What we see is that developers don't seem to buy it. There are very few people using RSK network because it only Just after the development, Ethereum has been preparing to switch to 2.0 PoS. Ethereum used personal experience to prove that it is wrong to run the smart contract platform directly on the PoW consensus mechanism.

After 3 years, it was hard to make it, but it still couldn't solve the problem. So RSK had to set up RIF Lab, and made a third-tier RIF OS based on Bitcoin Layer 2 RSK to improve performance. How long have you been busy? unknown.

From the experience of RSK for several years, we can find that Bitcoin is successful as digital gold, but because of the expansionary limitations, it is quite difficult to make smart contracts to meet more demand. Perhaps 10 years ago, Nakamoto had never thought that Bitcoin would do so much in the future.

In summary, Bitcoin's own limitations can't satisfy everyone's needs. Even if it can, it needs to be implemented at the second and third levels. This is obviously very difficult, and it is very drastic for the original system with strong consensus support. The possibility of upgrading is very small.

At the beginning of development, I have extended the design to the underlying projects, such as ETH2.0, the Nervos project specially optimized for the expansion of the second layer, breaking the technical limitations and making the project easier to implement, and the development cycle is relatively easy. Shorter, if you can get a lot of people's consensus, then the success rate will not be low.

02 Unpredictable future

 

Tell a story first:

Just when the domestic Internet was just emerging, there was a search engine company that broke through the encirclement. With the Internet traffic portal, it occupied a large area of ​​the Internet. "Baidu, you know," has become the consensus of hundreds of millions of netizens for many years. . At that time, Baidu was infinitely beautiful. In the Internet era where traffic was king, it ranked first in BATJ. Over the years, no matter how many old and new search engine competitions, it still accounts for more than 70% of the search engine market share.

However, since the outbreak of the mobile Internet era, the traffic portal has become diversified, the rise of Weibo, WeChat, and today's headlines have divided more and more cakes, which has doubled Baidu's pressure. An era has quietly ended, and some giants who have been invincible have to follow the team if they don’t seize the new opportunity. On August 14, the former small company NetEase had a market value higher than Baidu and became the fifth Chinese Internet company.

The blockchain industry is still in the early stages of barbaric development. It is still far from the end. All the projects are still running on the track, and new "athletes" are constantly coming in. In the future, innovative technologies such as the Internet of Things, AI, and 5G are coming non-stop, and the future business and life scenes will inevitably differ from the present.

Even though Bitcoin, like the giants in the above story, has occupied a large market share for a long time, it still faces competition from various innovative technologies brought about by the rapid development of high-tech in the future.

No one can predict the future. Therefore, even if someone says "except for bitcoin, all the altcoin will eventually die" is just a guess. Nothing is impossible in the face of an unpredictable future.

03 is awesome

 

Only bitcoin, no mainstream currency? In fact, the following two pictures can be decided.

▲ The number of platforms on the shelves, the data comes from: non-small

▲ Data from: bitinfocharts

In the encryption market, there is basically a Bitcoin trading platform, there must be Ethereum, and there may be Ethereum on a platform without Bitcoin. Since 2017, Ethereum's active address has quickly approached Bitcoin and has surpassed it. Ethereum, which is only 3 years old, has not been strong enough in many aspects of the 10-year-old bitcoin. However, the market tells us that its popularity has begun to match Bitcoin and even beyond Bitcoin.

In 2017, if someone says that the future market value of Ethereum will surpass Bitcoin, most people will believe that it may happen the opposite . In fact, these attitudes are only going to follow the market conditions. When Ethereum rises again, it will have the same voice.

Whether it is the Ethereum, the pioneer of the smart contract platform that has more value in the blockchain, or the Ripple that has caused many financial institutions to feel the threat, it is their emergence that lets people see the future of the blockchain in addition to digital gold. More possibilities outside. Regardless of whether these latecomers succeed or fail, there will be more competitors in the follow-up.

04 Competitive coins on the road to innovation

 

We know that even if the towering tree can madly occupy and absorb the nutrients in the water and soil, many flowers and plants can still grow on the edge of the towering trees. There are not only one consensus among billions of people around the world in a free market. There are a lot of problems with Bitcoin that can't be solved, and the future of the blockchain is still very large. Bitcoin ships are hard to turn around, and we can see that innovators in recent years are moving along the direction of solving problems and the future space.

A glance at the current competitors, their directions are different, and the various solutions for Bitcoin's shortcomings are almost pervasive: large block expansion, chain expansion, cross-chain, layering, fragmentation, DAG, mixed consensus , privacy protection, multi-centered, vertical applications, etc., almost as long as the direction can be thought of, there are projects are doing, and these directions are gradually coming from the ground up.

The innovations brought by many projects have been recognized by people. The communities of these competitive coins are constantly growing and growing. Who can erase their Hanma credits in the blockchain industry in one sentence?

▲ Bitcoin market capitalization as low as 33% in 2018

The reason why many people think that other than Bitcoin will not work, mainly because of the recent strength of Bitcoin and the problem of the "cottage" itself. If the competition currency is used as a pot of porridge, then this may not be because a mouse has broken porridge, but the whole pot of porridge may be less than half of the rice, and most of the rest are mouse cockroaches .

Therefore, this can not blame the eyes of the masses is not snowy, but the current industry supervision is not standardized, and at the same time lack some standards, so that the mice are mixed in too much. If the supervision of the industry pushes the industry to the right track, the rat cockroaches can be eliminated and eliminated, and the innovative competitors can be said to be clear-cut.

05 innovation is the future

 

The times are changing, the wind is changing, and technology is changing at an alarming rate. No giant can live forever.

Fear the future and fear the future. In the first half of the development of the blockchain, barbaric growth has brought more consensus; the future blockchain will be a competitive platform, and those who seize the opportunity of technological change will lead the future. .

After the first half of the industry's brutal growth, the supervision that will follow up will come, and the industry will become more compliant and healthier. In the second half of the development of the next blockchain, how will the competitors break in the shadow of Nakamoto's curse? Where is the opportunity likely to appear? Next, we will explore the second half of the blockchain with everyone.

Message Mining No. 307: Where do you think the opportunity of the second half of the blockchain may be? Feel free to share your opinion in the message area.

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Original: hellobtc.com

『Declaration : This article is the author's independent point of view, does not represent the vernacular blockchain position, and does not constitute any investment advice or advice. 』

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