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, Author: Zhang Yu, Lin Jun, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
"Perhaps after many, many years, the believers in the Bit God Cult will gather together happily and meet each other with a pot of dirty wine. No matter how many things have happened in ancient and modern times, they will all be laughed at."
On July 31, 2017, Jiang Zhuoer posted this passage on Weibo, expressing his emotion over the chaos and fierce fighting within the Bitcoin community.
Two days later, Bitcoin forked and the cryptocurrency space ushered in a newborn: BCH.
Just like opening Pandora's box, since August 1, 2017, Bitcoin has been successfully born, not only BCH, various forked coins, but also endless disputes.
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Two years ago: parted ways
On May 23, 2017, representatives of 58 companies from 22 countries flew from all over the world and gathered in New York for an intimate meeting.
The meeting, organized by Barry Silbert, founder of the industry's top cryptocurrency investment firm Digital Currency Group, will determine the future direction of Bitcoin.
Unexpectedly, Miao Yongquan, who represented Bitcoin Core and Blockstream, was turned away.
This is a meeting that blocked a group of Bitcoin core developers and "arbitrarily" decided the fate of Bitcoin.
In the venue, there was a lot of voices. Almost all the most valuable companies in the Bitcoin industry chain were gathered here, including exchanges, mines, and real power figures in the entire industry chain.
"They can neither represent the company, nor the users, nor the developers. How can it be considered an agreement?" Miao Yongquan shouted and complained outside the door.
A year ago, he was still running for the Bitcoin community to reach a consensus. The meeting held in Hong Kong, where all parties fought with each other and finally reached a handshake, is still vivid in his memory.
At that time, after 18 hours of fierce fighting, even though there were many difficulties, the participants of this meeting put aside their prejudices and reached a consensus to confirm the expansion of Bitcoin-this consensus was called the "Hong Kong Consensus" by currency circles. ".
The determination of the Hong Kong consensus has allowed those who seek a way out for Bitcoin to find their way, but hidden dangers are also buried under the consensus.
At that time, the opposing party to the Bitcoin core developers was the group of miners headed by Bitmain. The latter hoped to expand directly on the original basis of the Bitcoin network. They supported the large block scheme, while the former hoped to maintain the Bitcoin network Based on the foundation of 1MB, allocate energy to develop the Segregated Witness and Lightning Network of the second-tier network.
Behind the different directions, there is a huge conflict of interests hidden. After the disappearance of Satoshi Nakamoto, is the decision of the fate of Bitcoin in the hands of the core developers, or in the hands of the miners who control the computing power?
The battle for capacity expansion started the battle for succession.
Although the Hong Kong meeting established a consensus, it was unexpected that this was just a feint by Bitmain.
In fact, the faction of miners headed by Bitmain was not satisfied with this. After nearly a year of preparation, a new meeting kicked off. blocked the door.
This staged the above-mentioned scene where Miao Yongquan was rejected.
At this meeting in New York, the miners reached a second consensus. They agreed: the first step is to deploy Segregated Witness in August 2017, and the second step is to expand the block size to 2M in November 2017. .
This plan to snipe Bitcoin developers, of course, will not be recognized by the Bitcoin Core team, who have attacked the New York Consensus on various occasions.
"The New York consensus entangles a lot of interests. The mining pool owner wants a hard fork, and the developers will not sit still." After the miners officially declared war, Miao Yongquan and others were not to be outdone.
Since this is a meeting dominated by the Bitmain system, industry insiders believe that if the new plan is followed, the final result will be Bitmain’s own altcoin and altcoin, which “has nothing to do with orthodox Bitcoin.”
"It's not miners fighting against Bitcoin users, it's some Core developers fighting against Bitcoin users." As early as 2016, Jiang Zhuoer expressed such a view. He believes that "the Core team should use the funds for the development of Bitcoin and provide better Bitcoin solutions for the Bitcoin community, rather than for fighting in the middle."
The situation continued to ferment and the war continued to escalate.
Since no agreement was reached on the Bitcoin soft fork plan, the angry Wu Jihan directly resorted to his ultimate move.
Microbit, a mining farm invested by Bitmain, announced a hard fork plan, no longer choose to bow and compromise, but directly "fork". According to the plan, the capacity of the new forked coin will reach 8M, which can accommodate transactions more than 8 times that of Bitcoin, and is not compatible with Segregated Witness.
Since then, BCH, a fork coin that competes head-on with Bitcoin, was born.
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The pitfalls of bitcoin
As early as 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, he planted a time bomb.
At the beginning, Satoshi Nakamoto designed a capacity of 1M for Bitcoin to prevent the risk of attackers overloading the Bitcoin network. However, as the impact of Bitcoin continues to spread and the number of users increases, the original capacity is no longer enough. use. Users use Bitcoin to transfer money more and more slowly, but the transfer fee is getting higher and higher.
Satoshi Nakamoto did not expect this situation. After releasing the white paper, one of the questions he left a message in the community was the hidden dangers of Bitcoin expansion that may arise in the future.
For this hidden danger, members of the Bitcoin community are also scratching their heads. Although there have been hundreds of proposals before and after, due to various reasons, it is impossible to reach a consensus.
By 2016 and 2017, this problem has become a constraint restricting the development of Bitcoin.
Representatives of two different forces within the Bitcoin community—the Bitcoin core developer Bitcoin Core faction and the miners faction—also formed during this stage, and the contradictions between the two sides became increasingly intensified.
Bitcoin Core holds the most critical code of Bitcoin and the most loyal trust of Bitcoin believers. The faction of miners headed by Bitmain represents the core force for generating new blocks for the Bitcoin network.
Regarding the issue of Bitcoin, the former advocates that the block size of 1M remains unchanged, and use Segregated Witness and Lightning Network on the upper layer of Bitcoin; the latter hopes to move to a large area quickly and upgrade capacity.
The two parties kept fighting and gaming, and in the absence of coordination, eventually led to the bifurcation of Bitcoin, and the Bitcoin believers who had stood on the same front parted ways.
With the end of the first hard fork, new problems began to be exposed.
And it was this fork that made Wu Jihan's notoriety as a "mine tyrant" spread.
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BCH is forked
On August 1, 2017, Bitcoin forked out of BCH. Among those who supported BCH, there was not only Wu Jihan, the founder of Bitmain, but also an influential figure who would also dominate the currency circle because of the fork in the future: Craig Steven Wright (CSW), known as Satoshi Auben.
Back then, Bitcoin Unlimited (BU), the technical team that supported Bitmain’s expansion plan, was an ally. It accepted CSW’s Wu Jihan and invited CSW to participate in BCH’s high-level meetings many times.
The time has passed for less than a year, and Wu Jihan, who once fought side by side with CSW, finally meets swordsman.
After the gauntlet was issued, CSW threatened in public: In fact, he did not support the BCH fork in August 2017. In order to correct this mistake, he quickly accumulated computing power, threatened to attack BCH, and further attacked and wiped out Bitcoin, making Bitcoin Coins returned to before Core dominated.
As soon as this remark came out, the friendship between him and Bitmain fell apart in an instant.
Regarding the reason for the BCH computing power war in November 2018, the mainstream view is that CSW and Wu Jihan's pursuit of the BCH development route is irreconcilable. The party headed by CSW tends to let BCH return to Satoshi Nakamoto's original plan, while Wu Jihan's party believes that BCH should be transformed to meet actual needs.
In the recent live broadcast, Jiang Zhuoer, who witnessed it, believes that there are other reasons for CSW's insistence on splitting BSV.
He believes that CSW seems to be the leader of the BSV community, but in fact CSW is just a pawn. The gold master and manipulator behind BSV is the casino tycoon Calvin Ayre, and Calvin Ayre’s ultimate goal is to get from the Canadian stock market through Coingeek. make money. The fork of BCH to BSV is just a step in Calvin Ayre's capital layout. He believes that the whole fork is planned and premeditated.
Facing Jiang Zhuoer's accusation, Ao Bencong on the other side of the screen did not respond positively.
Regarding this fork, some media once asked CSW: What do you want to gain from this battle? He replied: "Victory. Ultimately, native Bitcoin. No other compromises, nor will there be any, and I have none here."
What is the real reason why CSW forked out of BSV, we can't be clear, but at least one thing is certain, that is, the BCH community and even the entire cryptocurrency will be "backed" in this fork war.
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Who is the real Bitcoin?
There are two types of forks in Bitcoin: soft forks and hard forks.
The soft fork is backward compatible, that is, the old and new nodes can operate normally after the upgrade; the hard fork is the opposite: all nodes must be upgraded, and the nodes that do not upgrade cannot operate normally.
The biggest risk of hard fork is that soft fork can be rolled back, because whether to rely on new rules is optional. But the hard fork cannot be rolled back. If there is a bug in the upgrade, you can only do another hard fork, which is easy to fall into the dangerous situation of continuous forking.
"Among the forked coins, there are very few that can really solve the actual problems of the BTC network." Industry insiders once said.
In fact, many forked projects since August 2017 did not promote the development of Bitcoin, but brought endless troubles to Bitcoin.
Ted Rogers, president of Bitcoin wallet Xapo, said a word when describing the Bitcoin fork: "The Genie is out of the Bottle (the monster has released the bottle)."
After BCH, there are more than a dozen new currencies that follow the trend and fork Bitcoin: BCD, BCG, SBTC... These projects under the banner of improving and optimizing Bitcoin are useless except for making money, and they have greatly damaged Bitcoin, if you look at it from this perspective, Bitmain, the first hard fork of Bitcoin, is the "monster".
Regarding the BCH computing power war that once stirred up the currency circle, Xiong Gao shouted "BCH is dead", and the blogger "BTC sniper" in the currency circle also expressed the same point of view: "The real BCH is dead, and the remaining , just the two split coins BCHabc and BCHsv.”
"We're caught in a 'cryptocurrency civil war.'" Cryptocurrency analyst Brian Kelly said traders feared a slowdown or "chaos" in bitcoin and BCH markets after the software upgrade.
To this day, the discussion about who is the real Bitcoin and who has completely inherited the will of Satoshi Nakamoto is still going on. The consensus split caused by several forks is constantly reducing the consensus of Bitcoin, but one thing has two sides, and what follows is the ever-growing and prosperous cryptocurrency ecology.
Bitmain, which dominated the hard fork of Bitcoin, had a hard time.
Previously, according to the leaked Bitmain financing documents, some media found that Bitmain China held more than 1 million BCH, which accounted for more than 5% of the total circulation at that time. It can be said that "directly controls BCH".
Bitmain, which firmly controls BCH, enjoys the spotlight, but also suffers from it.
In September 2018, Bitmain went public in Hong Kong. In the 438-page prospectus, Bitmain introduced that as of the first half of 2018, Bitmain had lost more than $100 million in cryptocurrency impairment. As we all know, a large part of the cryptocurrency held by this company is BCH.
Not long after it was born, the newborn BCH, which is weak and weak, had to rely on the power behind Wu Jihan, and this eventually became Bitmain's "sweet" burden.
In the animal world, if the ant nest wants to expand externally, it must rely on the new queen to leave the ant nest and go outside to rebuild her own independent kingdom.
In the kingdom of digital currency, people with different beliefs in Bitcoin, after choosing different paths, also established themselves like a new ant queen and started an independent development process.
As for these new "ant queens", they consider themselves orthodox Bitcoin and plan to surpass Bitcoin and even replace Bitcoin.
