Written by: ZT

The entire crypto market has continued to fall from a high of $69,000, and has entered a bear market that has lasted for nearly two years, following the rhythm of Bitcoin.

As the Bitcoin halving approaches in 2023, people are beginning to expect that the crypto market will once again go bullish in 2024, led by Bitcoin, just like the past three bull markets.

However, history will not simply repeat itself. Bitcoin's development curve has entered a flat zone and it needs new catalysts to surge upward.

The fourth Bitcoin halving is expected to occur in April 2024.[1]

The block reward for miners will drop from the current 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Under the current 6.25 block reward, according to BTC.com data, the current Bitcoin price of mainstream mining machines is between $14,000 and $20,000. After the halving, if the computing power does not increase and the transaction fee income does not change significantly, the Bitcoin price needs to reach more than $40,000 so that miners can avoid losses and have the motivation to maintain the Bitcoin network.

In every bull market, Bitcoin's gains have shrunk, while computing power has continued to increase. In fact, Bitcoin has underperformed many large U.S. stocks since 2018, with gains only close to Amazon and Netflix, Apple's gains three times as much, and Tesla's gains more than eight times as much.

Even in a bear market, Bitcoin’s computing power continues to increase

Price trends after the first three halvings

In each halving round, the increase in Bitcoin is smaller than the previous round

How to keep miners in the network to maintain Bitcoin after Bitcoin mining endsSafetyThis question was raised shortly after the birth of Bitcoin. Increasing transaction fees is obviously undesirable, and increasing transaction volume to increase miners' income is the only way. Therefore, attempts to expand Bitcoin have never stopped, and Bitcoin hard forks, as a way to "find a better Bitcoin", continue to occur.

Bitcoin Hard Fork History

A Bitcoin fork is defined as a change in the Bitcoin network protocol or a situation that occurs when two or more blocks have the same block height. A fork is usually done toBlockchainAdd new features to reverse the effects of a hack or catastrophic error. A fork affects the validity of the network rules, and a fork requires consensus to resolve, otherwise a permanent split will occur, which will become a hard fork.

Hard forks can be divided into several categories depending on the object and purpose of the hard fork.

1. Hard fork of Bitcoin client

1. Bitcoin XT

Bitcoin XT is one of the earliest notable hard forks of Bitcoin, initiated by Mike Hearn. Before the actual fork, Mike Hearn published BIP 64[2] on June 10, 2014, proposing to add "a small P2P protocol extension that performs UTXO lookups given a set of exit points". On December 27, 2014, Hearn released version 0.10 of the forked client XT, which included the changes in BIP 64.

In August 2015, Bitcoin XT adopted BIP 101[3] released by Gavin Andresen, which changed the block size limit to 8 MB/block and increased Bitcoin XT's TPS to 24. Bitcoin XT was initially successful, with more than 30,000 to 40,000 nodes running its software in late summer 2015. However, after just a few months, the project lost interest and was essentially abandoned by users.

2. Bitcoin Classic

When Bitcoin XT fell, someCommunityMembers still wanted to increase the block size. In response, a group of developers launched Bitcoin Classic in early 2016. Unlike XT, which proposed increasing the block size to 8 MB, Classic intended to increase it to only 2 MB.

Like Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic also initially saw a surge in interest, with the node range being around 27,000 to 200,000 nodes over a period of several months in 2016. The project still exists today, with some developers strongly supporting Bitcoin Classic.

3. Bitcoin Unlimited

Bitcoin Unlimited has been a mystery since its announcement in early 2016. The project's developers released the code without specifying what type of fork it would require. Bitcoin Unlimited was unique in that miners were allowed to decide the size of their blocks, with nodes and miners limiting the block sizes they would accept, up to 16 megabytes. In November 2016, this changed, and the project moved to a solution that shifted the restrictions of the software rules into the hands of miners and nodes. The complexity of the rule changes has largely prevented Bitcoin Unlimited from gaining acceptance.

2. Hard Fork of Bitcoin

This is the most common type of Bitcoin hard fork, which creates a new Bitcoin by changing the network rules and sharing the transaction history before a certain time with Bitcoin.Blockchainnetwork.

Here is a list of hard forks that split Bitcoin by date/block:

• BCH - Bitcoin Cash original chain, fork block: 478558, date: August 1, 2017, customers can get 1 BCH for every 1 Bitcoin they hold

• BTG-Bitcoin Gold, fork block: 491407, date: October 24, 2017, customers can get 1 BTG for every 1 Bitcoin they hold

• BSV-Bitcoin SV, fork block: 556766, date: November 15, 2018, customers can get 1 BSV for every 1 Bitcoin Cash they hold

• XEC, fork block: 661648, date: November 15, 2020, customers can get 1 XEC for every 1 BCH they hold

1. Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

The first Bitcoin hard fork occurred on August 1, 2017, giving birth to BCH. This fork was initiated by the Bitcoin Unlimited team mentioned above, and the backer behind it was Bitmain, the world's largest mining machine manufacturer. This fork created a fourth-largest mining machine in terms of market value.cryptocurrency.

BCH is a supporter of the large block expansion route and now supports blocks up to 32MB. Bitcoin Cash remains the most successful hard fork of Bitcoin and as of June 2023, it is the 28th largest by market capitalization.cryptocurrency.

2. Bitcoin Satoshi Version (BSV)

On November 16, 2018, CSW (Craig Wright), an Australian businessman who has long called himself Satoshi Nakamoto, launched a fork action against BCH. A BCH fork chain named BSV (Bitcoin Satoshi Vision) was born. In CSW's view, this chain means "Satoshi Nakamoto's Vision."

Similar to how BCH forked from BTC, the fork of BCH also represents the dispute over the routes of the two factions in the BCH camp, Wu Jihan and CSW: Wu Jihan advocates gradual improvement; while CSW calls for a radical revolution - directly adopting the super-large block size of 128M and "locking" the client to version 0.1 of the Satoshi Nakamoto era.

3. Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

BTG was a hard fork in October 2017 that diverged from Bitcoin in terms of the PoW algorithm required for miners, with the creators aiming to restore GPU mining as they believed the equipment and hardware required for mining had become too specialized.

The increasing difficulty of Bitcoin mining and the emergence of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) hardware created specifically for Bitcoin mining have made it almost impossible for ordinary people to participate in Bitcoin mining. BTG supporters believe that this is not conducive to Bitcoin'sSafety.

BTG created a pre-mining function, which placed a certain amount of BTG directly into the team address, which later caused controversy: in the eyes of many investors, BTG became a typical case of the project party harvesting leeks in the name of hard fork.

Since August 1, 2017, BCH became the first hard fork project in the history of Bitcoin, and there have been many Bitcoin forks since then. According to statistics, more than 10 Bitcoin fork projects were born in December 2018 alone. According to statistics from https://forkdrop.io/, there are as many as 78 fork coins of this type. Among them, a large number of speculators and scammers took advantage of the hard fork to commit fraud.

There are as many as 78 forked coins[4]

In addition to these two categories, there is also a hard fork that is an experiment for Bitcoin. You may think of LTC, but in the future you will hear about LayerTwoLabs, MainChain, and DriveChain.

LayerTwoLabs’ planned experimental hard fork

This is a type of hard fork that is forced, just like the birth of Monero and Ethereum, and the hard fork planned by LayerTwoLabs.

As the Bitcoin Core team and BTC ecosystem become increasingly conservative, and the Bitcoin networkSafetyBudget issues (first time,Part II) is crucial, and we need to be extremely cautious about possible major changes. In recent years, soft fork upgrades of Bitcoin have only occurred every 2-3 years.CommunityThe BIP-300/301 supported by members has been delayed in implementation, and the miner loyalty issue is becoming more and more obvious as the halving approaches. Measures to solve this problem must be accelerated. LayerTwoLabs plans to hard fork Bitcoin this year as an experiment and as a phased measure to seek a solution to the problem.

但LayerTwoLabs计划的硬分叉又与门罗、以太坊不同，后者因为自己的改进主张得不到Bitcoin Core团队的采纳而发起新链，LayerTwoLabs则是希望通过硬分叉的形式，验证自己DriveChain方案的可行性和效果，以此说服Bitcoin Core团队和反对者，在比特币网络进行BIP-300/301的升级，实现比特币网络的扩容，在未来强化比特币的Safety性和实用性。

BIP300 Miner Sentiment

BIP300 supports decentralized sidechains, For exampleEthSideorzSide, EvenLarge blocksize sidechainsBTC development becomes moreXiaobai NavigationCompetitiveness. Users may not trust BIP300, rendering it useless. Additionally, miners will be responsible for adding/removing sidechains, which they may find annoying. BIP300 does not seem to harm any other BTC use cases, so it should probably be activated.

New Species Drivechian Miner Emotions

`BTCv25+BIP118/118/300/301/345=? [5]

BIP301 Miner Sentiment

BMM Blind Merge Mining, improves merged mining by removing the need for miners to run alternative chain software. BIP301 can be used by altcoins (such as namecoin) or Bip300 sidechains (called "Drivechains"). There does not seem to be any technical objection to BIP301.MM joint mining has been used for more than 10 yearsOn the other hand, there hasn’t been much technical commentary on BIP301 yet. BIP301 doesn’t seem to hurt any other BTC use cases, so it should probably be activated.

LayerTwoLabs' hard fork is also different from BCH/BSV. The hard fork of BCH/BSV is inconsistent with the direction of the Core team in the expansion route. Their route requires changing the underlying code of Bitcoin, and there is a trend of continuous centralization in the future, which will affect the security of the Bitcoin network. LayerTwoLabs is an advocate of small blocks. DriveChain's expansion plan does not require code changes at the Bitcoin consensus level, and the security issues of the side chain will not affect the main chain. The existing doubts of opponents are mainly about the security of cross-chain assets and how to ensure that miners do not do evil in the case of centralized computing power. In the BIP-300 hook mechanism, the cheating of miners is not only a short-sighted sale that puts the cart before the horse, but also an immoral and illegal act in broad daylight, which can easily be taken by honest participants.

多年来，以Paul Sztorc、fiatjaf等人为核心的DriveChainCommunity，始终在努力推进、普及DriveChain，提出了更优化的合并挖矿形式BIP-301，设计了7条功能各异的侧链，整合矿工、开发者资源，即将对比特币的未来之路进行大胆探索。

Hard forks are both division and growth

It is dangerous to have only one voice in a group, and the consequences of complacency will be unbearable. Hard fork is a kind of split, but split is also a kind of growth, seeking opportunities from different paths. Bitcoin has always faced the problem of route. For Bitcoin supporters and enthusiasts, the experiment of hard fork is an exploration of solutions, not a split.

To some extent, each new Bitcoin fork isBlockchainThe development of itself and the entire crypto technology has created fertile soil, whether it is real developers doing innovation or forks that are just narrative hype. As the most popular crypto project on the market, Bitcoin has always been associated with using its publicly availableBlockchainThe center of attraction for new and promising code-related ideas, which has spawned a variety of exciting andcryptocurrency出现和以及GameFi、NFT、DeFi、Metaverse 等等Blockchain应用的出现。

DriveChain provides a simple, effective and secure way to load these use cases into the Bitcoin network and solve the fundamental network security problem caused by the decline in miner returns. LayerTwoLabs and the community will explore its effects.

References

[1] Bitcoin’s fourth halving is expected to occur in April 2024:https://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/

[2] Mike Hearn published BIP 64 on June 10, 2014:https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0064.mediawiki

[3] In August 2015, Bitcoin XT adopted Gavin Andresen’s BIP 101:https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0067.mediawiki

[4] There are as many as 78 forked coins:https://forkdrop.io/

[5]BTCv25+BIP118/118/300/301/345=? :https://github.com/LayerTwo-Labs

The article comes from the Internet:The history of Bitcoin hard forks: both division and growth

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