Bitcoin represents people’s yearning and exploration of freedom to use the Internet for conduct free trade without borders and time.
As the first generation of underlying blockchain network, Bitcoin has lifted infinite possibilities. It proves the feasibility of decentralized blockchain technology, and introduces decentralization concept in a centralized focused era. As for whether it can eventually become a truly global currency, or be sealed in a museum as digital gold, only time will tell. In a certain sense, this is just a great Social experiment.
The Bitcoin system is open source and stable, and it has been running for almost ten years. In the pursuit of freedom, it is based on the premise of sacrificing efficiency. The number of transactions carried by each block is limited within a time frame, and transaction costs are high. These became roadblocks for large scale application. As a result, various forks and coins came into being, expanding, optimizing network and consensus algorithms, reducing transaction costs, etc., and igniting the climax of “bitcoin babies”. Coupled with the boost of various institutions and capital, Bitcoin was pushed to the altar of wealth.
For the time being, while the various “babies” aim solve the existing problems of the Bitcoin system, what they brought has twisted a technology war into a fight for benefits.
With the expansion of the competition, Ethereum is gradually gaining doubt. Ethereum’s vision to be the “world computer” may not be the right direction for blockchain.
Once, all public chains wanted to be a “better Ethereum” and tried to break through the performance bottlenecks of such. In 2017, some projects put forward concepts such as “multi-chain parallelism”, “industry chain”, and “putting sub-chain data to the main chain for auditing”, but whether its success, most people in the circle at the time did not agree. There was the myth that everything needed to be on the chain.
Many believe that most projects can only try using blockchain to solve old problems, but it is reasonable to say that new technologies are needed to solve new problems. For example, before the Internet matured, WeChat or live broadcast was unimaginable. The bottom layer was not designed for these applications.
These opinions are not unreasonable, but it does not mean that it is meaningless to discuss this issue. For example, the former difference machine, Turing machine and Eniac (the first electronic general-purpose computer, using decimal) have contributed to modern electronic computers in experience.
Blockchain is gradually being recognized by some big companies, but most of them are alliance chains.
Due to the limited access to information on the alliance chain, there is the opinion that the alliance chain cannot be regarded as a blockchain and belongs to the distributed database technology. If the “blockchain” is seen as a value that satisfies “access rights open to all”, and not subject to any centralized organization or individual control, then the alliance chain is indeed decentralized by fundamentalists as “not Blockchain”. This model has been recognized by many large companies, and the startups adopting this model have at least achieved business. From commercial landing perspective, the alliance chain is obviously valuable.
The underlying blockchain should not be used for storage, but should be a connector that knows where to find source information quickly. It is a basic platform for recording and depositing and storing information on clearing and trading. The premise is multiple different entities collaborating in a network. Copyright, commodity traceability, and supply chain finance are some natural application scenarios of the underlying public chain.
