Bitcoin unlimited Archives

Bitcoin Unlimited Creator: Only On Chain Scaling Helps Real Life Use Cases.

Posted on May 8, 2017 | by [email protected]

Bitcoin Unlimited is a full node software client for the Bitcoin network. It removes the limit, allowing the users to determine the block size by consensus.The B itcoin scaling debate is still ongoing since no decision has yet been made.

Bitcoin Unlimited developer Andrew Stone believes that on chain scaling and understanding how people use bitcoin are the most important issues to address. Solutions like SegWit and Lightning networks are good, he said, but they are not addressing the right problems the good way.

The extent the Scaling debate has reached

The Scaling debate has been on for the last two years and it is still heating up again to determine how many transactions can be put into each block on the bitcoin blockchain during the trading and transactions of bitcoins. In many bitcoin forums, there are mixed reactions from people but these reactions have a forward leaning trend towards Bitcoin Unlimited. As for the final decision, we are yet to see what the miners will decide in the recent coming months.

How Scaling will affect the end users

To my own understanding and opinion, I think the Scaling will not affect the end users negatively but positively, since it will protect the growing network against spam transactions from bad actors and it will also enable the end users to know the number of transactions that they are supposed to put or place in each block chain during the bitcoin transactions. Although the latter statement holds true, there are of course challenges with Bitcoin scaling. Some of the challenges will come in the form of Decentralization arguments, Minimum system requirements being undefined, Known unknowns and processes. This effect was pointed out by an undisclosed redditor saying,

“There would also be a related BIP describing the basic requirements for a full node in terms of RAM, CPU processing, storage and network upload bandwidth, based on experiments — not simulations. This would help determine quantitatively how many nodes could propagate information rapidly enough to maintain Bitcoin’s decentralized global consensus at a given block size.”

Scaling versus Fork: What are the connections?

Scaling refers to determining the number of transactions that are supposed to be placed into each block chain and Fork simply occurs when two miners find a valid hash within a short space of time. But the connections come in when the network splits into two, where a half of the network believes one block is the next to be included in the blockchain ledger, the other half of the network believes in a different block.

With Bitcoin Unlimited seeming to be the next Bitcoin processing platform and protocol, it has to be seen how Bitcoin price will react.

The War within: Bitcoin SegWit Vs Bitcoin Unlimited

Posted on May 5, 2017 | by [email protected]

There has been a debate for the last two years concerning whether to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit to work as Bitcoin functioning platform.About 95% of all miners have to come to terms before SegWit can be activated while for Bitcoin Unlimited only requires 70% of the miner’s vote.

The long-awaited decision on whether to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit has now been made. 70% of miners who now made a decision on whether to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit but 30% of the miners have not yet decided but it would be interesting to see what they do decide once they get around to exercising their duty.

What does the 70% of miners who have decided mean to Bitcoin?

This decision simply means that this 70% have decided either to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit. Their decisions depend on their benefits from both platforms whether Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit and the platform with the highest percentage will be used or taken as Bitcoin platform. However, there is a possibility of a split due to some people refusing to use Segwit in preference to Bitcoin Unlimited or the other way round. This could lead to the inception of the idea of running both segwit and bitcoin unlimited concurrently.

And the 30% of the remaining Bitcoin miners?

The remaining 30% of Bitcoin miners will have to decide whether to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit so as to exercise their duties as Bitcoin miners. Their decision will have to put the decision at place since they are the remaining people to decide the fate of Bitcoin as Bitcoin miners. This will greatly affect Bitcoin’s future as a trading and transaction currency. I don’t see any hope of a fork of any kind taking place due to the indecisiveness of the Bitcoin miners.

Is it possible for Bitcoin Unlimited to win this decision?

According to Bitcoin norms, Bitcoin Unlimited is likely to win this decision since it advocates for a platform that can support all Bitcoin transactions without interruption. Bitcoin Unlimited is likely to do all these without any problems. It still all depends on Bitcoin community whether they will give a majority vote to Bitcoin Unlimited or vote to keep using Bitcoin core. Many bitcoin enthusiasts and experts alike are not yet well convinced with the idea of Bitcoin unlimited as can be seen from this reddit thread from an anonymous redditor.

“Taking a get-rich-quick scam like BU seriously enough to do a comparison like this is akin to falling for the false “controversy”.There is no real controversy. BU is simply yet another hostile takeover attempt by large corporate interests.We’ve seen all too many of these scams before, with large advertising budgets to spread disinformation.”

This thread and many others that appear online is a clear indication that the cryptocurrency community might not yet be ready for a major shift of Bitcoin operations. At the point of writing this article, Bitcoin Unlimited was more likely to win the comparison.

How Bitcoin exchanges are planning to tackle the Bitcoin Hard Fork

Posted on March 20, 2017 | by [email protected]

With the Bitcoin markets fixated on slowly making the switch to bigger blocksize, speculation has taken over the Bitcoin market prices. The number of outstanding transactions to be processed on the Bitcoin Network has been piling up due to the limit on the Blocksize of the Bitcoin network. With piling transactions, there has been a delay in the validation of the exchange. This has defeated the unique selling point of the cryptocurrency and the Bitcoin community has concentrated their efforts towards tackling the problem. Let’s dive deep into how proposed alternative for Bitcoin fork will be impacting the exchanges and how they plan to handle the ordeal of fork in the days to come:

Speeding up transactions:

The Bitcoin community has resolved to speed up the transaction by increasing the block size in which the transactions are produced and stored per every ten minutes. This would mean by proposed terms the blocksize would increase from 2 M.B to 8 M.B being able to process more transactions per 10 minutes and thereby delivering on the transaction speed. These bigger blocks would be on the blockchain labelled as Bitcoin Unlimited and already 11% of the nodes are running on Bitcoin Unlimited. But this would mean exchanges also have to shift to the agreed upon currency depending on the final decision.

Exchange’s plan:

According to the statement released by a group of 20 exchanges, their plan for tackling the hard forking would be to list Bitcoin Unlimited as a separate currency. Since the digital currency would be splitting up into two currencies, Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited would be the two blockchains on which the currency would be splitting up depending on the Block sizes. Bitcoin Unlimited would now be listed as an alternative cryptocurrency under the BTU or XBU tickers in the event of a network split.

The exchanges said:

“As exchanges, we have a responsibility to maintain orderly markets that trade continuously 24/7/365. It is incumbent upon us to support a coherent, orderly and industry-wide approach to preparing for and responding to a contentious hard fork. In the case of a bitcoin hard fork, we cannot suspend operations and wait for a winner to emerge.”

Why it becomes necessary:

The statement signed by Bitfinex, Bitstamp, BTCC, Bitso, Bitsquare, Bitonic, Bitbank, Coinfloor, Coincheck, itBit, QuadrigaCX, Bitt, Bittrex, Kraken, Ripio, ShapeShift, The Rock Trading and Zaif – the exchanges, clearly stated that the exchanges would be listing BU since the fork seems inevitable. The exchanges feel that with the advantages and integrity of the cryptocurrency being questioned, this would indeed be the right move to give the users of the company best service.

Bitcoin loses $2 Billion in Market Cap due to forking; Ethereum capitalizes on Bitcoin’s Loss

Posted on March 17, 2017 | by [email protected]

In the past three days, Bitcoin prices have plummeted from over $1,200 to $1,100 with clear signs of onset of bearish behavior owing to a strong fundamental factor. The market cap of the cryptocurrency dropped from over $20 Billion to $18 Billion in the past three days owing to the drastic fall in prices. While the market is in a strong uptrend on a long term time frame, this might very well be a major blow to the trend and might shadow the Bitcoin markets with bearishness. The influencing fundamental is the Bitcoin forking problem that has had negative impact on the prices in the past. Let’s dive deep into what exactly the problem and will forking really solve it:

The issue at hand:

During the processing of Bitcoin transactions, the processed transactions are stored in ‘blocks’ which is turned into a complex math problem. Bitcoin miners, owing to their high hashing power (processing power), calculate the solutions of these problems to determine if the transaction is possible. The solutions are then validated by the other minors and are added to the ledger as complete blocks. This would result in reward generation for miners. However, it has been observed recently that the number of outstanding transactions to be processed has been piling up and is defeating the purpose of the cryptocurrency which promises quick transactions.

The solution and attaining consensus:

Due to the piled up transactions, Bitcoin unlimited has emerged which suggested that to tackle this problem, we can increase the block size. Major Bitcoin industry players like Roger Ver have backed the idea but many in the community are of the opinion that the method might not be totally safe and might lead to disruption in the blockchain ecosystem. Currently about 11% of the nodes run Bitcoin Unlimited and the rest of them run Bitcoin Core(The original block size). The idea is that the nodes can run Blockchain Unlimited software which would indicate their support for increasing the block size. If 50 percent of bitcoin miners adopted Bitcoin Unlimited, there would then be two major blockchains. This would result in a “fork” between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited.

Both blockchains would be operational with their respective nodes but there would then be essentially two different coins – Bitcoin and Bitcoin Unlimited.

The impact on the price and the boost to Ethereum:

The Bitcoin community is yet to hit consensus on what would be the next move – a plausible scaling or a forked blockchain. Both the events are expected to have adverse effects on the prices and would take some time to settle down from the impending volatility. Hence Bitcoin traders and investors are offsetting their exposure to altcoins like Ethereum. Hence there was a sudden rise in the prices of Ethereum that has made the cryptocurrency reach all-time highs for the year. How the forking would impact prices further is to be seen.