the Bitcoin, Bitcoin to Cash, Bitcoin, SV. Who’s going to keep the view? Reason enough to remember how it came to the projects and how they differ.

By Alex Roos
13. December 2018ShareFacebookTwitterLinkedInxingemail

Almost ten years after the birth of Bitcoin, the electronic Peer-to-Peer money system, there are several technologies that claim to be „the real Bitcoin“. The most popular candidates at the time of writing, all in the Top 10 crypto-currencies by market capitalization.

It’s Bitcoin…

once upon a time it All started with the scaling debate. This began already in early times, well before the escalation of the conflict. In the year 2013 was discussed at the time the Central ideas of the marketplace, bitcoin talk, the by Satoshi Nakamoto implemented block size limit. Fortunately, you can keep track of these discussions even today. For anyone who has the time to shimmy through the threads:

a group that had also included the already submerged Satoshi Nakamoto, believed that there should be no fixed block size. The Hardware would improve over time, and larger blocks help.

The against side argued that it was in the case of increasing block size, it is increasingly difficult to operate a Full Node (Full Node is a node in the Bitcoin network, which has stored the complete transaction history of the Blockchain, and each individual transaction can be verified, without the need to rely on a third party leave). This would mean that only professional companies could verify with money for Hardware and an excellent connection to the Internet, the Blockchain. This would provide an attack vector for authoritarian governments that want to censor the network.

Satoshi Nakamoto himself had installed, the upper limit for the block size as a quick Fix. You would mean to abolish a fundamental Change in the rules, a Hard Fork. The Bitcoin Protocol has not changed at that time; but the seed of the conflict was scattered.

The scaling debate, 2017

In the year 2017, the conflict welled up then. Bitcoin has enjoyed growing popularity. Thus, the number of transactions rose. However, due to the limited block size of the transactions are accumulated. Who wanted to promptly get a transaction in a Block, had to pay a higher transaction fee. The users started to compete for space in the Blockchain, and the transaction costs increased. Bitcoin’s usefulness as money system for payments has fallen as a result. A solution was already in the works, namely SegWit (Segregated Witness).

With SegWit (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 148) would not be stored, the digital signatures of the Bitcoin transactions in the Blockchain. Ergo, would also increase more space in the Blockchain for transactions – without the block size. SegWit would be a Fix for the Transaction Malleability. Transaction Malleability describes the change of unconfirmed transactions without the transaction, is invalid.

Parallel to this, a rumor made the rounds: the ASICBoost. The Bitcoin-Mining Hardware maker Bitmain should have managed to optimize their ASICs hiding to require less energy than the competition. This Trick, it was argued, would be hiding and, of course, Bitmain denied all the allegations. Bitmain was, however, opponents of SegWit. SegWit would make the suspected ASICBoost impossible, the economic incentives languages so.

So two camps: Bitcoin SegWit and Bitcoin Unlimited formed. Bitcoin Unlimited was the idea that any limitation of the block size should be abolished and left to the size of the blocks to the miners. For the Bitcoin-Unlimited-storage, especially Roger joined Ver, the Bitcoin.com CEO on the Plan, but also Bitmain-Co-Founder Jihan Wu. Bitcoin SegWit was represented by a number of Bitcoin-Core-developer, block, stream, and more.

escalation: bitcoin Hard Fork

in mid-2017 were hardened the fronts to the extent that no agreement was in sight. The SegWit-side had to be retrofitted with the UASF (User Activated Soft Fork). Here are the Full Nodes in the Bitcoin network indicated that after the 1. August 2017 would only support SegWit. As a result, the bearing of Ver and Wu took the helm in their own hands and decided to do a Hard Fork. On 1. August 2017 separated then the paths. Bitcoin (BTC) activated SegWit and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) abandoned SegWit, increased the block size to eight megabytes.

Since then, hasn’t changed technologically in Bitcoin (BTC) much. SegWit is active and allows new address formats, and the Lightning Network. The block size was abolished, there is now a block weight. This is around four megabytes. The effective use of the space on the Blockchain has been increased so there is something, however, was the primary fixed the Transaction Malleability. So the BTC Community opted for the conservative way is the Soft Fork.

The division of the Bitcoin cash’s

Bitcoin, Cash (BCH) went the way of the larger blocks and less conservative way of Hard Forks. It was agreed within the BCH Community, twice a year, a Hard Fork. In may 2018, the Plan was for the first Time application. The block size in BCH was your new Limit is now at 32 megabytes. Also, some OP-Codes were re-activated for the Protocol. The Hard Fork went off without a hitch, the conflict is resolved seemed…

… until August of 2018 arrived. The specifications for the next Hard Fork, in November 2018, stirred great Controversy within the BCH Community. As in the previous year, two camps were formed. On the one hand, Roger Ver, and Jihan Wu with your ABC Protocol were again. On the other hand, Craig Wright, aka „Satoshi Nakamoto“ and Coingeek-CEO and Billionaire, Calvin Ayre with Satoshi’s Vision (SV) this time. In the following months, a lot of mud flew from both sides – but especially by the Wrights. A civil war began.

As of the 15. November, the day of the Hard Fork, came, split the Bitcoin for Cash network. First, it was said by Faketoshi that you didn’t want a Split. I was threatened instead with a 51-percent-attack and wanted to wipe out the ABC chain. This battle was known as the Hash Wars in the still young history of the crypto-currency. The end result was yet split a Chain. So two different Coins exist today. One bears the name of Bitcoin to Cash (the ABC group). The other Coin follows the Vision of Craig’s, sorry, Satoshis and Bitcoin SV (Satoshi’s Vision) is called.

Technical:preparation of BTC, BCH and BSV

but What is the different bearings are different on the technical level?

Bitcoin (BTC)

Of the three projects is Bitcoin the only thing that has fixed the Transaction Malleability. The Fix for this is SegWit. This was at the same time abolished the block size and a block weight replaced. It works like this: Each Byte of a transaction has a „weight“ of four bytes. If it is, however, a Byte of the SegWit area (i.e., the outsourced digital signature of a transaction), then this weighs a Byte, only a Byte in the Block. SegWit transactions receive a Discount.

For SegWit new address formats. For one, these are the P2SH-P2WPKH addresses that begin with a 3. On the other hand, the native P2WPKH and P2WSH, or Bech32 are addresses that start with bc1.

SegWit was a Soft Fork. In other words, the participants in the Bitcoin network do not agree to active. However, this also means that not all participants in the Bitcoin network benefit from the innovation. We will consider currently the Bitcoin Ecosystem, so we see that SegWit comes only in 40 percent of all Bitcoin transactions.

source: https://oxt.me/charts

Finally, one should note that SegWit favored the construction of the second levels, in particular the Lightning Network.

Bitcoin, Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin Cash since the Hard Fork in November 2018, only little Similarity with the Bitcoin to Cash before this Hard Fork. Only the Name has remained the same.

The biggest Change, which provided, among other things, also for the controversy with SV, the Canonical Transaction Ordering, short-CTOR. In order for the scaling to extremely large blocks would be easier, because blocks can propagate faster in the network. Bitcoin and Bitcoin SV arrange their transactions, however, topologically (TTOR). However, BCH has not so great blocks, let alone the volume of transactions. The Chart shows the average number of transactions per Block in comparison to Bitcoin (BTC). A few Spikes, the transaction volume is far below Bitcoin.

source: cash.coin.dance/blocks

The second controversial Change is the activation of OP_CHECKDATASIGVERIFY (DSV). Thus, Smart Contracts and oracles, for example, in the BCH-Blockchain.

The Hard Fork also brought some minor improvements, such as a minimum size of 100 bytes for transactions, a Stack and Push cleared-Only for the scriptSig. The block size remained unchanged at 32 megabytes.

In the Hash Was a severe war wound had BCH, however, for fear Of a 51% attack by a hidden Mining the developers of the implementation of ABC to take advantage of their Power and a built Checkpoints in the client. Thus, it was impossible, that there was a reorganization of the Blockchain over ten blocks. This action may be criticised as a shot into your own leg, because as a result BCH is becoming more and more of the actual „Vision Satoshi’s“, in the case of the chain with the most Proof of Work as a valid history of the transactions.

Bitcoin SV (BSV)

The Vision of Satoshi’s lives in Bitcoin SV. Under the leadership of Craig „Satoshi“ Wright BSV of the original Version of the Bitcoin Protocol is approaching again – of course, without the initial Bugs.

When the Hard Fork on may 15. November increased BSV, the maximum block size to 128 megabytes. Furthermore, some of the OP Codes of the original Protocol have been re-enabled. Thus, the Vision of a full programming language is called on the log level back to life. In addition, the Hard Fork has loosened the restrictions for scripts.

BSV was able to save himself so largely, and without prejudice to the Hash. Finally, you had to see that had divided the former Bitcoin Cash network irreconcilable.

You can go your own way

The history revealed that the Bitcoin Community has a fundamental disagreement. Bitcoin (BTC) sees the value to memory (Store of Value) as the value of the crypto currency. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) emphasize, however, the function of the medium of exchange. Many a Time, these different perspectives have led to the crossroads, where the Communities of the columns.

the beauty of an open source and permit-free Software is located here: Everyone must choose the path that is in his eyes the best. On the other hand, the Hard Forks, tear apart the Communities and prevent the network effect of a single, global means of payment.

For us users, although the question of which project is the best. But, while the miners and developers need to decide where you put your energy, can we dance at all weddings. The last dime in the Bitcoin question is not yet fallen. So let’s wait patiently for a few years and give everyone the Chance to prove himself.