Yesterday, Ao Bencong tweeted that in 2019 we will start teaching people how to build a real SPV system (payment system). The tone was as confident as ever.

Jiang Zhuoer, the "spokesperson" of BTCABC, responded to netizens on Weibo, saying that BCH (BTCABC) is the best bitcoin.

This is the 17th day after the hashrate war. At present, the two chains have been running independently, and blocks are produced stably. At press time, BTCABC was priced at $150 and BTCSV was priced at $87. So far, this much-anticipated battle of computing power has come to an end.

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01 Computing Power Supremacy

Before the battle of computing power, Wu Jihan wrote a preface titled "The Beauty of Computing Power" for "Everyone Understands Blockchain" published by Quantum School. In the article, he combined computing power with cosmology, and believed that the universe tends to be disordered, and the meaning of life is to establish a microscopic order for the chaotic universe. Therefore, when personal computing power cannot be exhausted, silicon-based computing power becomes the most effective way.

"Computing power may be an effective means for human beings to lead to a higher civilization."

“It makes more sense to have more computing power than money.”

"Computing power is beautiful...Those villages in the west that were originally quiet and unknown, those territories that had never been patronized in the industrial age, because of the entry of computing power, they began to emit the light of "science fiction". These computing power are scattered in Dadu, a tributary of the Minjiang River. By the river, indulging in the night of Dalat Banner in Ordos, sleeping soundly in a small town in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang...Technological civilization and the power of nature have achieved a fusion through computing power."

Wu Jihan used a series of parallel sentences to raise computing power to the height of human civilization and aesthetics.

In popular understanding, computing power means that the computer obtains a 64-bit hash value through a large number of calculations. Because there is no fixed algorithm, it can only collide randomly. Therefore, the faster the calculation speed, the greater the probability of encountering, that is, The greater the computing power.

The implementation of this kind of computing power worship idea into the real world is that Bitmain’s mining pools in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and other places, as well as ant mining machines whose replacement speed is comparable to the evolution of integrated circuits in the past ten years . At present, the total computing power of its mining pool has accounted for 30% of the global total computing power of Bitcoin (it once reached 53%), and the ant mining machine has almost become the only choice for miners.

Therefore, no matter how romantic the cosmic sentiment in the article sounds, when facing a holder with huge computing power, everyone has an inexplicable fear in their hearts. Some people even regard the existence of Wu Jihan and Bitmain as a kind of "computing hegemony".

The most personal experience of this "hegemony" was the computing power war two weeks ago.

That night, less than half an hour before the fork, CSW's computing power was far ahead. Just when people thought CSW was going to win, the Bitcoin.com mining pool of the Bitmain camp suddenly increased its computing power. The computing power of the entire BCH network is even higher. andAccording to known statistics, the sum of the computing power of the ABC camp is 3.4 times the total computing power of the entire BCH network. Theoretically speaking, it is possible to control the entire BCH by simply drawing a little computing power from the BTC network. Therefore, launching a 51% attack seems to depend on their mood.

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02 The collapse of decentralization

What really worries people in the industry is whether the fantasy of a brave new world brought by the blockchain will eventually become a bubble when people see the collapse of "decentralization".

The decentralized community is famous for its freedom and equality. Any member of the community can raise objections and launch computing power attacks, as long as his computing power is large enough. In the BCH computing power war, the most impressive thing is computing power leasing. The two sides who are preparing for the war will fight this battle of computing power by leasing the computing power of mining pools and miners at high prices. So can we think that as long as we have enough financial resources, we can launch a computing power war or directly carry out a 51% attack by renting computing power? Here we see the fragile side of a decentralized system known for its security.

This is easily reminiscent of the "barbarians at the gate" in the traditional financial world. They also use this method. Once they take a fancy to a company, they sell securities to banks, fund companies, and insurance institutions around the world to raise funds, and then quietly buy the company's stock to obtain a controlling stake, and repackage it. Then sell it at a high price. This game of snake and elephant is the direct cause of the 1987-1988 financial crisis in the United States. Once one of the links goes wrong, the whole system will collapse.

But we also know that the traditional financial world has a pair of tangible hands that impose many restrictions on financial institutions, while in the decentralized blockchain world, giants are completely free, at least in several mainstream blockchain networks. See such a mechanism.

From the perspective of vested interests and free market supporters, this is entirely the result of the free market. "Free competition will make prices and supply and demand about the ultimate balance" This is their rhetoric and basis. But the most obvious disadvantage of the free market lies in the giants and monopoly, so it often needs a pair of visible hands to restrict the giants.

So in the blockchain community, is there also a need for a "restriction on giants" mechanism? Among the many projects reported by Odaily,The underlying public chain ENTANMOsecondary title

03 Double hard fork, three new ways to fly

Another thing to think about is that this is not the first fork, and the fork of Bitcoin and Ethereum is not so "wasteful". What is the difference between the fork of BCH this time? Zhihu NetizensGutrapThe analysis is quite interesting. He believes that this fork is the first of its kind for "dual hard forks". Because according to the original plan, BCH will be upgraded from version 0.17 to version 0.18. These two versions are incompatible with each other, so it is called a hard fork. During the upgrade, some miners upgraded to run version 0.18, and some miners continued to run version 0.17, and finally dug out two different versions of BCH, each independent, which is the standard plot of a hard fork. Version 0.17 of BCH is the original chain, and version 0.18 is the new chain.

But in this hard fork, a version 0.1 of BCH SV came out, which is neither compatible with the protocol of version 0.17 of the original chain Bitcoin ABC, nor compatible with the version 0.18 of the new chain Bitcoin ABC. So when the hard fork happened, there were at least three versions of the protocol running, namely version 0.17, version 0.18, and version 0.1 of SV. However, due to the small computing power of mining version 0.17, it could not survive in the end. So in fact, miners are divided into two groups, one group is mining version 0.18, and the other group is mining version 0.1 of SV. So this is a "double hard fork". That is to say, it is a competition between two different upgrade routes, not a competition between the old and new versions.

Ancient Tuleibo AnalysisIn this case, technically, there is absolutely no need for both parties to choose to fork at the same time. The SV 0.1 version can be directly upgraded and excavated at any time with enough computing power to produce this new version of the chain. The time is chosen at Any node before or after the upgrade of version 0.18 is fine. This is how BCH came about. It picked a day at random, and then initiated a hard fork upgrade to BTC. This trick was later used dozens of times by other coins.

Then why are the two hostile parties so "tacit" that they insist on choosing to fork at the same moment?Gutrapthink,This mainly implies the idea of ​​"original chain priority" of Bitcoin.

Before the 0.18 upgrade, the computing power upgrade was initiated to SV 0.1, so the other party is still running version 0.17, which is the original chain. When the original chain is still alive, SV 0.1 comes out as a new chain. Who is the authentic BCH? In addition to computing power factors, the original chain that has existed for a longer time will easily win. If later, version 0.17 is not upgraded for the time being, its authentic status will be consolidated, and it will be inherited to version 0.18 after a period of time.

In another case, after the 0.18 upgrade, the computing power upgrade SV 0.1 is initiated. Similarly, the 0.18 upgrade comes first, which is the original chain and has a longer history. Regardless of the choice of the front or the back, the hard fork is not good for the SV camp. Therefore, the best timing is to trigger it at the same time. There is no difference in a block, which is also convenient for the code Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. So the first "double hard fork" in the history of Bitcoin happened. Both parties abandon the old chain at the same time, giving birth to two new chains. "Two false Wukong are fighting to be the real Wukong".

"This is a new way of playing, the first one, and the currency circle will start to learn this trick again. When a coin is going to be hard forked, at the same time, there will be a "double hard fork", Double (Double Fly), or even Triple ( Sanfei)...flying to the point of playing." He said.

Speaking of which, it feels like a fork is like a physiological period of a system, fragile and vulnerable, unable to withstand any virus attack. Since bifurcation is the only way to upgrade the system, if we want to discuss how to avoid this "period attack", we still have to return to how to weaken the power of giants.

Finally, when we talked about the impact and significance of this computing power war, someone used World War II as an example.

"In a decentralized community, differences in consensus are inevitable, and only by ending the differences can the community develop better. Just like after World War II, the world economy is more vibrant. The houses destroyed during World War II and the shortage of clothes all drove the post-war economy. development.” This is the view of an industry insider we contacted.

It's true that there was more economic activity after the war, but that's what the war destroyed. For example, after this computing power war, the combined market value of BTCABC and BTCSV is far smaller than the market value of BCH before the war. In this battle of computing power, according toJiang Zhuoer revealed, at most it costs 100 million yuan per day, and 700 million yuan a week... In addition, the current bear market 2.0 is also related to the panic caused by the BCH fork. Assuming the hashrate wars hadn’t happened, the money that was spent could have been invested in R&D and community development. So no matter how hard the two communities tried to prosper after the war, they were just trying to restore the state before the war.