How to get bitcoin after bifurcating
About bitcoin, the news is flying all over the world these two days
specifically, a foundation called BTN foundation announced that it has set up a bitcoin bifurcated development team to launch a new bitcoin bifurcated BTN. Now its official website is online, which is called btn.kim. Two days later, bitgo, another bitcoin development team, announced that it would fork out from bitcoin. Its name is BTF, which literally means "bitcoin faith"
according to Yao yuan, a well-known bitcoin columnist, bitcoin will "have 10 children" in December, and will at least bifurcate out of 10 "children" such as BCX, SBTC and LBTC
as soon as these things happened, the bitcoin market began to fluctuate again, some investors blew up, and all kinds of rumors came out: why so many forks? Is bitcoin out of order
in fact, the bifurcating of bitcoin is far more complicated than what it shows. If we don't explain its historical background clearly, we really can't understand what happened
< b > the origin of bifurcations: the origin of the bifurcations of bitcoin has existed. The so-called bifurcations refer to the accounting differences caused by different underlying protocols. According to Xue Hongyan, director of the Internet financial center of Suning Financial Research Institute, bitcoin is jointly maintained by a number of point-to-point decentralized nodes. The orderly operation of the whole system depends on the consensus of all nodes, that is, there is a set of recognized standards for key issues such as which transactions are acceptable and which nodes have accounting rights. This set of standards is deployed in the underlying protocol of blockchain and implemented automatically
but nodes are operated by people after all, which is the so-called "miner", but everything operated by people will be different. For example, the miners of some nodes go online every day, while the miners of some nodes go online occasionally; Some nodes are in the eastern hemisphere, some nodes are in the Western Hemisphere... In a word, e to various reasons, over time, bitcoin has different underlying protocols in different nodes
if different versions of underlying protocols are running in a node, different standards will appear, which will result in bifurcation. If the nodes can deal with these version differences and finally form a unified standard, the bifurcation will eventually disappear, which is called soft bifurcation. If the difference cannot be eliminated, when some nodes continue to run different versions of the protocol, the bifurcation will continue, which is called hard bifurcation
it's easy to solve the problem of soft bifurcation, that is, if the account book is wrong, just modify it. Hard bifurcations are not easy to solve. No one thinks he is wrong and explains them according to his own standards. In the end, he can only go his own way and keep his own account. At present, bitcoin bifurcation refers to hard bifurcation
< b > the first bifurcations: the first hard bifurcations of bitcoin technology upgrade are purely technical reasons. The settlement performance of bitcoin itself is limited. According to the original technical agreement, bitcoin can only support up to seven settlements per second. This was not a problem in the early days. With the fire of bitcoin, more and more people flocked in, and the settlement became more frequent than ever. At this time, the original technology was not enough
therefore, in the middle of 2017, some miners proposed new technology agreements, but the other miners did not agree with them. Eventually, both sides held one end and ran their own underlying agreements, which was the first bifurcation in the history of bitcoin
However, with the development of bitcoin trading means, speculators graally regard the bifurcation as a means of money collection, which leads to a great change in the nature of the current bifurcationthe principle is that each bifurcation is essentially equivalent to the issue of a new digital currency, which is linked to bitcoin. The target audience is larger than the general ICO, and it is easier to be accepted by ordinary users than issuing a new digital currency directly
because the team that creates this kind of bifurcation takes the lead, it is very easy to control the transaction of the new currency, especially in the early stage, and it only needs a small cost to control the price trend of the whole currency. This leaves a lot of room for speculation. The forked team only needs to make the new currency accepted by the users, and then it can artificially raise the price to a sky high price. After the real users come in, they can sell all the money they hoard, and get high profits out of thin air
on October 25 this year, a domestic team forked out bitcoin gold (BTG). Two days before the forking, Jiang Zhuoer, CEO of leibitchi, denounced the forking as money looping: "Liao Xiang, founder of BTG, had g 200000 BTG coins in advance before the forking, and wanted to convert them into 20000 bitcoins, looping 80 million yuan."
The advantage of bifurcations can be seen, so that the word "bifurcations create value" has become popular in the field of currency speculation. For this reason, a new word "IFO" - first token issue has been derivedHe Sheng, a well-known financial blogger, once told the media that most of the so-called IFO may evolve into the operation of collecting money by harvesting leeks. "Many previous ICOS are doing IFO, and ICO needs to write a white paper and go to the stock exchange to gain market recognition, while IFO does not even need to write a white paper."
this also explains why bitcoin is becoming more and more profitable. To put it bluntly, everyone wants Nakamoto
Can< b > not bifurcate
whether it's Hong shuning of Suning finance, or Mike & Chen, CEO of bitgo, a bitcoin wallet software provider and one of the project leaders of segwit2x; Mike belshe, the instry actually refuses this bifurcation of bitcoin. In fact, real blockchain practitioners have always hated speculation. At present, the leading enterprises in the domestic blockchain instry have clearly expressed their opposition to the overflow of bitcoin bifurcation. For example, when Xunlei launched the first popular blockchain project in China, its CEO Chen Lei said in an interview: "Xunlei opposes all speculative activities using blockchain, so it is definitely against bitcoin for the purpose of speculation and leek cutting arbitrage."
However, to solve this problem, it is not enough to have an attitude alone, but to have specific means. The best way is not to let bitcoin bifurcatethis is difficult to achieve. Bitcoin's own technology is a relatively primitive blockchain technology with limited computing power. It can barely cope with the previous transaction scale. In view of the current situation of bitcoin fire, it is difficult to support. So sooner or later bitcoin will have to solve the problem of its own computing power
but there is no hope at all. With the innovation of blockchain technology, there will always be some new ways. For example, the shared computing proposed by Xunlei can effectively improve the total amount of computing power and rece the cost per unit of computing power without changing the existing hardware facilities. If bitcoin is combined with shared computing, it can effectively solve the problem of bitcoin's computing power limit without new bifurcation
secondly, the bifurcations for the purpose of cutting Chinese chives can be supervised by means of supervision. For example, compared with the real name system of special currency wallet, the real name system of transactions can effectively prevent the risk of Financial Bureau. At present, the real name system has been implemented in some blockchain projects, and has achieved good results. For example, Xunlei's blockchain is the first blockchain application to introce the real name system in China, which basically eliminates the hidden danger of malicious speculation
in a word, there is a way. It depends on whether bitcoin players accept it or not, and there is a process to implement it. It takes time. Therefore, at this stage, it is better for us to stay away from the bifurcations of bitcoin in various names
Q: What is bitcoin bifurcation and why
A: the reason why bitcoin bifurcates is that the underlying technology of bitcoin is blockchain. Some people begin to think that bitcoin's block capacity is too small and there are always congestion. So they ask for bitcoin's upgrade and expansion. Some people think that bitcoin's function is too single and its future development is not optimistic, So these people ask bitcoin to have the function of building DAPP (decentralized application), and some support it, while others oppose it. This kind of divergence can be understood as the bifurcation of bitcoin
Q: the classification of bitcoin bifurcation
A: there are two kinds of bifurcations of bitcoin, one is soft bifurcations, the other is hard bifurcations, so what is soft bifurcations
Q: the formation principle of soft bifurcation
A: soft fork refers to optimizing and modifying bugs in the original bitcoin network to improve the capacity of the block, such as 2m, 4m or 8m, 16m. The segwit lightning network is the mainstream solution, which is equivalent to a traffic jam on the main road, and the development team will build an auxiliary road to help the main road to divert congestion
this is a mild solution, which can make the original bitcoin network compatible with the network after soft bifurcation, and the main transaction of bitcoin is still on the main chain
Q: disadvantages of soft bifurcation
A: of course, there are disadvantages of soft bifurcation, that is, it can only solve the temporary congestion problem, and after the implementation of soft bifurcation, it can only keep the network unobstructed for a few years. In the future, it needs continuous expansion, which has an impact on the stability of the system
Q: what is hard bifurcation and its formation principle
A: another solution is hard fork, which means to upgrade the bitcoin system again, change the height of the block completely in the form of code, and take bitcoin unlimited as the mainstream solution. Generally speaking, it is equivalent to a traffic jam on the main road. We directly abandon this road and find a place to build a three-dimensional transportation hub on the ground and underground. All new cars use this transportation system, which changes the block size of the bitcoin network and optimizes the processing speed of the network
Q: what are the disadvantages of hard bifurcation
A: but hard bifurcations also have disadvantages, that is, they are not compatible with the original bitcoin system, which requires all people in the bitcoin network to support hard bifurcations. If some people do not support hard bifurcations, there will be two versions of bitcoin network, which will proce two bitcoins. The blockchains of the two bitcoins form a competitive relationship, This kind of internal friction will lead to greater price volatility and uncertainty of bitcoin's future situation
Q: a classic case of bitcoin bifurcation
A: Eth and etc are typical cases of hard bifurcation. The Dao project is a crowdfunding project initiated by slock.it, a blockchain Internet of things company. It was officially released in May 2016. As of June of that year, the Dao project has raised more than $160 million. It wasn't long before the Dao project was targeted by hackers. Because of the huge loopholes in the smart contract, the Dao project was transferred to ether coin with a market value of 50 million US dollars
in order to recover the assets of many investors and stop the panic, vitalik buterin, the founder of Ethereum, finally proposed the idea of hard bifurcation, and finally completed the hard bifurcation in block 1920000 of Ethereum through a majority vote of the community, rolling back all the Ethereum coins occupied by hackers
even though Ethereum hard bifurcates into two chains, some people who believe in the tamper proof property of blockchain still stay on the original chain of Ethereum classic. Today, Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum classic (etc) are ranked in the top 20 in the global cryptocurrency market value, which is one of the reasons why they are regarded as classic cases in the field of hard bifurcations
Q: the difference and influence between soft bifurcation and hard bifurcation
A: for users, soft forking will not proce new bitcoin currency. They only need to understand the transaction mode and K-line characteristics of bitcoin. They only need a mainstream wallet of bitcoin
hard bifurcation will generate new currencies, and there may be more than one new currency. Once the core code of bitcoin is modified and the core code of bitcoin is reconstructed, there may be a second time for the first time, and btc1 and btc23456789 may all happen. Users will be confused. Which kind of coin would be better for me to trade? What kind of bitcoin do I use to pay for a large circulation range? In short, users with dyschooia will crash. Moreover, users need to download wallets of different hard bifurcated systems, which brings complex operation to save and pay bitcoin
however, correspondingly, the user's right to choose has also increased. You can choose the bitcoin code developed by the development team you like and trust. When the bifurcations of bitcoin are not clear, when the soft bifurcations start to activate and the computing power starts to vote, the best way for users to deal with it is to wait and see. Don't recharge and extract bitcoin in the process of bifurcation
in addition, soft fork will change the settlement mode of bitcoin all nodes, and some small settlement will be confirmed by the third party node, namely settlement channel. The settlement channel may incur part of the service charge. Similar to the role and business model of UnionPay
what is bitcoin bifurcation? The difference and influence of soft bifurcation and hard bifurcation
The capacity of a block in bitcoin is 1m (megabytes). A transaction is between 250 and 500 bytes
according to this algorithm, a block contains about 4194.3 transactions
the confirmation time of a block in bitcoin is 10 minutes, so the seven transactions that a block can process per second may sometimes be less than seven
What are the consequences The bifurcations of
bitcoin are divided into hard bifurcations and soft bifurcations
hard fork means that when the block format or transaction format of bitcoin changes, the UN upgraded nodes refuse to verify the blocks proced by the upgraded nodes
the upgraded nodes can verify the blocks proced by the non upgraded nodes, and they continue the chain they think is correct, so they are divided into two chains
What is soft bifurcationsoft bifurcation means that when the data structure of bitcoin transaction changes,
UN upgraded nodes can verify the blocks proced by upgraded nodes,
and upgraded nodes can also verify the blocks proced by UN upgraded nodes
In the discussion of blockchain, bitcoin and other digital currencies, we often hear the word "bifurcation". So what is bifurcation? What is the effect of bifurcation
blockchain
before talking about bifurcation, popularize a little knowledge of blockchain, so as to help us understand what bifurcation is more easily (if you don't have any concept of blockchain, please read my previous articles, which are all popular words to help you understand what blockchain is)
blockchain, as the name suggests, is a chain composed of blocks. Of course, this kind of chain is just a figurative metaphor. To put it bluntly, data blocks are connected orderly. In bitcoin, the transaction records of bitcoin are stored in the block. The size of the block and the space occupied by the transaction records determine how many transactions can be stored in a block. These transaction records are packaged into blocks, and then the blocks are connected one by one to form a blockchain
We know that bitcoin software, like other software, needs to be updated and modified regularly in order to make it better. So a new version will appear, but not everyone will download the new version, so one miner will run the old version, and some will run the new version. If the old and new versions are not compatible, the blockchain will bifurcate. Because there may be differences between the version blocks and the old version blocks, they cannot be connected to the same blockchain, so there will be two or even more chains, which is called bifurcation
soft forking
soft forking refers to that when the new consensus rules are released, nodes that have not been upgraded will proce illegal blocks because they do not know the new consensus rules, resulting in temporary forking. This kind of bifurcation will be graally repaired with the upgrading of nodes
hard fork
hard fork refers to the permanent divergence of the blockchain. After the release of the new consensus rules, some nodes that have not been upgraded cannot verify the blocks proced by the upgraded nodes, and usually hard fork occurs. Therefore, in the field of digital currency, hard bifurcation often leads to the emergence of new currencies. For example, the hard bifurcation of Ethereum led to the emergence of eth
What is bifurcation? What is bitcoin bifurcationas we all know, there are two common types of bitcoin wallets:
first, the network version, which does not need to be downloaded by users, can directly access the wallet platform through a computer or mobile phone, and use bitcoin wallets
Second, the stand-alone version, which needs to be downloaded from the computer (or the lower end of the mobile phone) and installed before it can be used
in addition, there is a bitcoin wallet (Hard Wallet) similar to U disk
as a bitcoin wallet service platform, coin pack thinks that whether the bitcoin in the wallet will generate new tokens after bifurcation mainly depends on whether the wallet supports bitcoin bifurcation
as a bitcoin wallet, whether it is a network version, a stand-alone version or a hard wallet, it is necessary to compare the bifurcated support of bitcoin before a new token can be generated; Whether there is a new token proct depends on the users
users can also consult the customer service of the wallet to learn about the bifurcations of bitcoin.
on August 1, 2018, bitcoin carried out a hard bifurcation to proce BCH. BCH is the result of community division, not a kind of bifurcated coin. BCH has its own strong community support. However, at that time, some wallets did not support BCH to collect.
the birth of bitcoin
the birth of bitcoin should be on November 1, 2008. A man with the pseudonym of "Nakamoto Tsung" published a paper on the Internet. In this paper, he described in detail a new monetary system, which he named "bitcoin"
then, on January 3 of the next year, the first bitcoin program was born in the hands of Nakamoto Tsung, along with the first 50 bitcoins from mining. After that, he began to fade out until he disappeared completely
so far, people have not found out the real identity of this person, even if today's operators, Internet giants and the government have firmly grasped people's behavior on the Internet
he often switches between American and British English when he speaks. He goes online at different times of the day at random to hide his nationality and time zone; He hides his IP address, encrypts his email, and deliberately forges some writing and speaking styles to confuse the public; Besides, he is also an expert in cryptography. By the way, the place where he published his paper is called & quot; Cryptography mailing list & quot
so bitcoin was born with a hacker spirit: against the censorship imposed by any force
of course, we can also see that if a hacker who invented the anonymous currency system can't be anonymous, the whole thing will become a joke< But fortunately, Nakamoto didn't let us down
1. What is currency
I find that I can't run this section in any case to clarify what is bitcoin. I am not an expert in the field of economics. I can only talk about this issue in a very superficial and intuitive sense However, as far as the theme expressed in the title is concerned, it seems to be enough)
it has been mentioned in senior high school textbooks (remember?), Money is the medium to store value. If a thing wants to become money, it must meet the following requirements:
1) scarcity
that's why gold can be used and sand can't be used as money. Scarcity can be understood as the difficulty of obtaining it. The more scarce it is, the more difficult it is to obtain it. An intuitive understanding is as follows: assuming that your monthly salary is 5000 yuan, it means that the scarcity of RMB is just such a degree, that is, you have to pay a month's labor to get 5000 yuan. You won't agree to pay your salary with 5000 grains of sand, because instead of working for a month to get it, you can easily get it by walking around the beach
how does the current financial system guarantee the scarcity of money? Control distribution. The issue of money is firmly in the hands of the central bank, so that the amount of money can be controlled (so you now know that it is illegal to print money without permission). Back to the example just now, you agree to pay you a month's salary with 5000 yuan because the circulation of RMB has just reached this level. If the circulation of RMB doubles and the scarcity decreases, you should ask for 10000 yuan to pay your salary (but the response of the market is often not so fast. During this period, your wealth is actually deprived - your labor should have received 10000 yuan, but only 5000 yuan in return)
2) transactional
of course, the purpose of currency is to trade. As many people tell you, money is spent, not brought into the coffin. So in addition to meeting scarcity, the more convenient it is for a thing to trade, the more it meets the standard of ideal currency. Therefore, in the history of currency, silver dollar has replaced shells, paper money has replaced silver dollar, and digital currency is graally replacing paper money
the "transaction" here refers to the transfer of property from one party to the other, that is, the decrease of one party's property and the corresponding increase of the other party. For physical currency, it happens very naturally. A wants to give 100 yuan to B. when the 100 yuan note is transferred from a's hand to B's hand, the transaction is completed. A's property is reced by 100 yuan and B's property is increased by 100 yuan. There is no third party involved in this process, which is completely a private act between a and B; However, when the transaction takes place at the level of digital currency, it is not so simple. Party A has to give 100 yuan to Party B. how can we ensure that the transaction is completed? Suppose that a and B record their wealth on their respective computers, how can we ensure that when B adds 100 yuan to them, a actually subtracts 100 yuan from them? Now we have to bring in a third party - the guy we call the bank. When a wants to transfer 100 yuan to B, he doesn't directly give it to B, but to the bank, "please transfer my 100 yuan to B", so the bank dected 100 yuan from a's account and added 100 yuan to B's account Let's assume that it generously does not charge any transaction fee)
the above is a rough model of modern monetary system. The biggest disadvantage of this model is that people have to trust a central system
the transaction of digital currency must rely on the bank, and a person's bank account number may be censored, restricted or even deprived. When one party wants to transfer his wealth to the other party, the bank can charge a high fee or refuse directly (for example, you try to remit a sum of money to a relative in the United States)
the issuance of money must rely on the central bank. Well, it's a well-known secret: the currency has been devaluing, or over issuing (think of the $100 20 years ago and the $100 now). I quote two paragraphs, one of which is Keynes's saying, "through a continuous process of inflation, the government can confiscate a part of citizens' wealth secretly and unknowingly. In this way, we can deprive the people of their wealth at will, while making the majority poor, we can make the minority rich, Another paragraph, from Hayek, "the government can not restrain the impulse to issue money indiscriminately."
is it possible to design a monetary system in which we do not need a central institution and are not forced to trust any third party, so as to make the issuance of currency transparent and controllable, and the transaction of currency private and secure
guess what
2. What is bitcoin
so we can now answer that bitcoin is an e-money system with decentralized distribution and transaction. In this system, the circulation of money is transparent and predictable, and the transaction of money uses the cooperation of the whole network to ensure the security of the transaction
next, I will graally dismantle the principle of bitcoin. It should be noted that bitcoin, as a proct already in use, has a lot of details. The purpose of this article is to explain the basic principles of bitcoin to readers without technical background, so these details will not be covered. For example, the address of the wallet is not the public key, but the second hash value of the public key; The difficulty requirement of blockchain is not to hash all the contents of blockchain once; wait. But for the sake of brevity, without affecting the explanation of the basic principles, these are simplified. I hope you can understand them
2.0. Bitcoin network is composed of many nodes running bitcoin programs
bitcoin is a network composed of many equal nodes
a node is a bitcoin program. Any machine that can connect to the Internet and have certain computing power can run this program - so your home computer can also be used as a node in the bitcoin network:)
nodes can communicate with each other. At the same time, bitcoin has a set of mechanism that allows a node to send messages to all other nodes, This behavior is called "broadcasting."
2.1. Blockchain - a public account book
let's go back to the example of banks. The most basic function of a bank is to maintain an account book, which only needs to record every transaction truthfully. For example, Wang Xiaoming transferred 30 yuan to Zhang Damao on X, year X; On y, y, y, y, Zhang Da Mao transferred 12 yuan to Li Xiao Dou, and so on. According to this account book, we can find all the transaction records of a person, so we can calculate the current account balance of the person. For example, since Li Xiaodou started to build a bank account, the total amount of transactions transferred in is 500 yuan, and the total amount of transactions transferred out is 300 yuan. Then it can be calculated that the balance of Li Xiaodou's account must be 200 yuan at this time
maintain this account book, and as the only maintainer (only the bank has the right to view and modify), the bank's responsibility as a trading center is completed
bitcoin also has an account book, but unlike banks, this account book is open and anyone can view and review it
this account book is called & quot; Blockchain & quot;. You can think of blockchain as a pamphlet. Every page of the pamphlet is full of transaction information, and new pages are constantly added<
2.2 Wallet - an account composed of a pair of public keys and private keys
the above section explains what a bitcoin account book is. This section will explain the ownership of funds in this account book, that is, the account system of bitcoin
there are essential differences between accounts in bitcoin and bank accounts
under a bank account, the bank records the identity information of the owner of the account (think back to the information you submitted when you went to the bank to open an account: photo, ID card, telephone number, home address...), so as long as you can prove your identity to the bank, you will get the ownership of the property under your name. In this model, the bank plays the role of an omniscient God: he knows the wealth information of real people. We have no choice but to pray to God not to let our information out or use it for evil
in the world of bitcoin, there is no such institution as bank, which will not force people to reveal their identities in exchange for the security of funds. Bitcoin's account is simply composed of two strings of numbers, which are called "public key" and "private key" respectively, and there is nothing else
the mathematical characteristics of these two numbers - a data encrypted by a private key can only be decrypted by a public key, so-called asymmetric encryption - enable them to perfectly implement the functions required by an account (called a wallet in the bitcoin world)
we take the public key as the account address - also known as the wallet address in the bitcoin world - which is similar to the account number in the banking system, that is, when you tell someone "please call 300 yuan for my account number", you need to tell them. For the bank, it is "China Merchants Bank 6214850200251100", compared with the special currency, it is "
the private key is the * only * certificate to prove the ownership of the wallet. You can hold it by proving that you are the private key of the wallet
of course, bitcoin cash has been forked once. The forked currency can be traded on microbit, and the price has plummeted a lot, which is basically negligible. This is also the case with most of the forked currencies
bitcoin cash has removed isolation verification, and currently supports 8m, which has great advantages in stability and handling charges.
as we all know, there are two common types of bitcoin wallets:
first, the network version, which does not need to be downloaded by users, can directly access the wallet platform through a computer or mobile phone, and use bitcoin wallets
Second, the stand-alone version, which needs to be downloaded from the computer (or the lower end of the mobile phone) and installed before it can be used.