THE DEBATE OVER BITCOIN EXPANSION(VII）

Review of the expansion

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._DJMINER

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._DJMINER

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 right to merge code at the time, was very cautious and made no decision on capacity expansion [131]. 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. [132]

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 meets 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._DJMINER

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._DJMINER

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._DJMINER

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."_DJMINER

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._DJMINER