Bitcoin's Fork Road

Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a hard fork of Bitcoin. To talk about the birth of Bitcoin Cash, we have to mention the famous battle for expansion.

Bitcoin's TPS is 7, which can process 4-7 transactions per second, so the transfer speed of the Bitcoin network is obviously slower compared to the centralized transfer system (VISA). When the number of transfers is too large, it will lead to network congestion, and the miners choose to prioritize transactions with high handling fees.

The high transaction costs and long-term confirmation have led some to question the original intention of Bitcoin's "peer-to-peer electronic cash system." Of course, the Bitcoin community has also been pushing for Bitcoin expansion.

Consensus was reached in February 2016, and plans to implement Lightning Network + Segregated Witness, and proposed a hard fork to increase the block size to 2M, but the hard fork eventually met with strong opposition from the community.

By July 17, 2017 Bitmain announced the fork of Bitcoin and named the new currency Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Cash. This scheme increased the Bitcoin block size to 8M, and it was officially implemented on August 1, 2017.

To sum up, that is to say, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash have adopted two completely different expansion methods: Bitcoin Cash simply and crudely increased the block size from 1M to 8M; while Bitcoin uses Segregated Witness and Lightning Network The way.

What does Segregated Witness mean?

Segregated Witness is to remove some less important "witness" scripts in the current block from the 1M block, thus freeing up more space to store more transaction information. With the use of Segregated Witness, the data packaged into each block of each transaction becomes smaller. With the same block capacity, the number of transactions that can be loaded in each block is greater, thereby alleviating the Bitcoin network. Congestion. The most direct analogy is that passengers take luggage with their luggage. Originally, luggage also occupied seats. Now luggage is placed in the luggage compartment so that more people can be seated on the bus.

What does Lightning Network mean?

The Lightning Network is an off-chain channel built on the underlying logic. Small amounts of money are transferred through the Lightning Network, so the characteristics of the Lightning Network are fast and cheap.

We can use an analogy to understand the expansion of the two. Bitcoin Cash chooses to directly widen the main road to ease the traffic pressure; while Bitcoin is to repair forklifts and interchanges outside the main road to prevent traffic jams. Therefore, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash have adopted two technical routes, which also represent different governance concepts.

At present, the main supporters of the BCH camp include Bitmain, Bitcoin Jesus Roger Ver, and Jiang Zhuoer, founder of the Leibite mining pool.

Development route (positioning)

The BCH camp believes that BCH should develop in the direction of the public chain under the premise of maintaining the 32M block, such as adding functions such as smart contracts to BCH, which can expand the use of BCH. However, with the dissolution of Wormhole and Copernicus' development team, it reflects the temporary failure and end of BCH in the direction of smart contracts.

Therefore, the current development path of BCH is more inclined to return to pure "electronic cash". Now the BCH community no longer has a similar statement that "BCH is the real Bitcoin".

However, there is still a competitive relationship between BTC and BCH. If BCH takes the "electronic cash" route, the first thing that comes to mind is the threats and challenges from the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Although the current Lightning Network is difficult to use and the usage rate is very low, However, it is undeniable that the two functions overlap, and there is a certain possibility of competition.