Author: Erik Aronesty 2018-01-22 20:40:58
Published on: 2018-01-22T20:40:58+00:00
The proposal of a simple method to solve the scalability issue of blockchain through a voluntary split is being discussed in the Bitcoin-dev mailing list. The technical aspect of the solution would be to split the blockchain into two or more blockchains (e.g. two blockchains A and B), voluntarily, where the two blockchains are the same except for some identifiers to distinguish them. Each blockchain would have its own coins that cannot be sent to the other one or interfered by the other blockchain. Everyone would get double bitcoins, each having half the value of the original one bitcoin. Then, two almost identical blockchains would exist and theoretically the capacity of the original blockchain would be doubled. When sending coins, the wallet should select one blockchain randomly and try to send it through only one blockchain. The method was inspired by the stock split where the price halves and the market capitalization remains the same. It is argued that the proposal will not cause dilution of anyone's bitcoin assets and the total supply can remain the same. The bad part of inflation of fiat money is not diluted value of every unit of fiat money caused by total supply increase but rather that the increased supply is released through debt expansion, which benefits those who can borrow more money with low interest ratio. With voluntary split of bitcoin, such dilution won't happen. Additionally, the proposal is considered backward compatible with old version transactions and creates a blocktree as new blocks are added to the leaves providing even more capacity. The discussion also delves into the question of what enforces that bitcoin A is worth the same as bitcoin B, and whether they are allowed to eventually diverge in price, among others.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T23:53:30.192610+00:00