In this type of civil war of the Blockchain community we have been given the resistance of the ideas and proposals of Gavin Andresen, after Mike Hearn de Bitcoin, different proposals of scalability and conflicts of interests of the different participants of the community of Bitcoin . These attitudes have slowed the development of Bitcoin while other initiatives such as ethereum (carried out by some of the same people who participated actively in Bitcoin) have experienced a spectacular boom.
As part of that war of interest it seems that we have reached a resolution that was made concrete in the month of August 2017, because this is the date indicated in the calendar for a possible hard hairpin or soft hairpin of the block chain Bitcoin . So the month of August could be the beginning of a month of huge volatility Bitcoin and all the Criptomonedas.
Jaime Núñez Miller, a partner of the web services consultancy at Zentank, co-author of the book "Blockchain The Industrial Revolution of the Internet" and pioneer of the Bitcoin ecosystem in Spain, clarifies the situation and gathers reliable information on everything that is happening.
What is and why is Bitcoin scalability important?
Well, actually scalability is a typical debate in many systems and especially in all those related to the internet. In these cases the architecture must be configured to be able to respond to strong demand without compromising security. The debate opens at the moment when several valid solutions are proposed in the same problem. This is what is happening now with Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin protocol is artificially limited in the volume of transactions that can be registered in each block. Each new block is like a new page that is added to an accounting book that we call blockchain or block chain. This limit of 1 mbar per block was imposed to prevent spam, ie to prevent someone from cabbage. Lapse of the network by sending millions of transactions per minute useless.
Due to its natural growth, users now send more managements per minute than those that fit into the blocks, so there is always a waiting list of pending transactions to be confirmed. Transactions that leave a larger tip or quota are more likely to be shaped quickly. Only a couple of years ago the price could be 1 cent, but today you have to add rates of 1 or 2 euros if you want your transaction to confirm in the next block.
Unpacking this situation have been proposed two different strategies: a very simple one that consists of directly increasing the size of the blocks and, therefore, the number of transactions that fit each block; And another more sophisticated than it does is reduce the size of transactions.
In both cases, it is necessary to change the rules of consensus, which is something like changing the "electoral law" of Bitcoin and this is very important because it will be the first time a change of this type is made in a situation of strong controversy. It should be remembered that this consensus system known as the "Nakamoto consensus" does not have a central authority to determine its future and that is precisely the main value proposition in almost all blockchains.
At the moment there are strong counterpositions and everyone should agree. In these coming months we will see alive if it can get its antiquity Bitcoin.
Can you describe to us what these interests have been in the Bitcoin community in the last two years and what initiatives have been proposed for these groups to solve the problem of scalability?
The Bitcoin scalability debate has been there from the beginning. We have always been asked whether this makes any sense or whether it is technically feasible to maintain a blockchain that keeps absolutely all transactions. I mean even the smallest ones, for example micropayments of a penny.
A blockchain that should always be a scarce resource. Common sense leads us to think that in the chain of blocks must be recorded only the most valuable operations, which needs all the functionality of a blockchain as irreversibility, immutability or decentralization; And that all other operations, the least important ones, such as the payment of a coffee, could be registered in side chains or other branches
