THE DEBATE OVER BITCOIN EXPANSION(IV）

Bifurcated shadow

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. 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."_DJMINER

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. 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 “Strongs for Capacity Expansion and the Political and Economic Prospects of Bitcoin”, after analyzing technical, economic, political, and ideological differences, believed that the roots of the differences were the direction and route. Controversy, 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.” This is obviously about Bitland 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 and Bit Continental Wu Jihan are against 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 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._DJMINER

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._DJMINER

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.

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.

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 miner 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. (Note: At that time, the abbreviation was BCC, and there was a lot of Core powder called “Skip and wipe”. Everyone felt that it was catchy. Later, I found that some exchanges had already launched a sub-currency currency abbreviated as BCC, so the community decided to change to BCH.) The BCH incorporates replay protection, marking its transactions as a different type of 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 issued a warning that the UASF may cause confusion in the fork. The price of BTC dropped 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.  This aggressive route did not receive a response. He did not participate in the BCH launch. The 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._DJMINER