Author: Lucas Clemente Vella 2017-06-21 04:46:15
Published on: 2017-06-21T04:46:15+00:00
The proposal to freeze the Bitcoin protocol as it is now, with no SegWit and no bigger block, would create Bitcoin 1 (BC1). To evolve and scale Bitcoin, a conservative sidechain called Bitcoin 2 (BC2) could be used. BC2 would be tightly coupled with BC1 and have no experimental changes - only the bare minimum to support more general two-way sidechains, linear scalability transaction verification time, and transaction malleability. Miners could choose to mine a BC2 block alongside a BC1 block for free once a BC1 block is found. The economic adoption of BC2 would be independent and voluntary and not require the strong consensus of SegWit. If a simple enough two-way sidechain over BC1 is feasible, that is good. If not, the economic value of BC1 will always be at least that of BC2 but never lower. BC2 may have a lower price than BC1 at first, but since it will have every feature of BC1 plus the possibility of massive scalability and instantaneous transactions with a lightning network built over BC2, it will most likely surpass the value of BC1. However, everyone migrating should be fully conscious about the risk of immediate devaluation.The two major risks of hampering adoption are fear and technological inertia. Fear may cause only enthusiast adoption initially, and implementing this payment system as any other altcoin may cause technological inertia. Both chains must be distinguishable, and it is desirable for the address format in BC2 to be incompatible with BC1.Due to the impending activation of SegWit with a promise to hardfork in three months, the proposal may be too late and will likely go largely ill-received or ignored.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T03:06:57.996733+00:00