It is a new year, and with that new year all the normal circle on social media focuses on the forecasts of “What will happen in 2020!” I wanted to extend it a little and look at the next decade. But before, I wanted to pass a minute for the last (yes, I know I’m a year late, blah blah) to really pierce to what extent things have come.
Mining and network safety
In 2010 the network was guaranteed by the hobbyists’ desktop cpu, trivially fueled by any great enterprising actor. At the beginning of 2020 it is guaranteed by billions of dollars of hardware that consume the collective electricity requirements of entire small nations, provided to operators by many different companies worth billions of dollars (data, Pie in the Sky Valuations, but still) . In 10 years, the network safety mechanism has moved from hardware and consumer hobbyists to specialized ASIC equipment and professionally managed data centers operations.
Development of the protocol
In 2010 you could send Bitcoin to public keys (or IP addresses), Timellock Transactions (only the transaction, not the utxo), raw multisig that were huge and expensive also to send, and oh yes: anyone could spend any coin using op_retururn due to a bug. And yes, I know that the script system had much more then, I’m talking about what was practically feasible for an average person. In 2020 … well, I think I have to point it this:
- Use P2sh to make money to more advanced scripts (such as Multisig) cheaper for the sending party.
- Timellock a real UTXO in absolute block or a UNIX Timestamp.
- Timellock a real UTXO at a relative or Unix Timestamp interval from its creation.
- Construction transactions that do not have malleable TXID for second level protocols/chained transactions thanks to the separate witness. (Also, we can now upgrade script easier two to segwit having its Own versioning. There are only so many undefined ops in bitcoin script that can be defined to add new script functions to bitcoin script. Segwit versioning at the new functions by use new with new with versions instead of using very scarce ops indefinite.)
- Use a basic version of the Lightning protocol, a second level enabled by the malleable correction implemented in Segwit.
- They actually distributed Sidechain in which more advanced and/or experimental features can be distributed and tests.
Ten years has produced an impressive amount of primitives with which to rely on the fundamental basis of the basic Bitcoin network and the blockchain. Above all, considering the complexity and difficulty of trying to ascertain consent on updates and therefore the implementation and distribution of these updates if it is present.
Political relevance
In 2010, Bitcoin was only an insignificant blip on the radar. The CIA had Only only noted and interested. Their response was to let a developer enter and make a speech, causing the disappearance of Satoshi Nakamoto. In addition, people were not paying attention, politicians were not paying attention, most agencies were not paying attention (except the alphabetical ones that we may not know now). Bitcoin was not a dark nothing.
In 2020 … Bitcoin generated an entire market and a sector for a value of hundreds of billions of dollars. Exchanges made billions of revenue from commercial commissions. The miners gained billions of dollars collectively in exchange for their operational investments. Tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of people who own Bitcoin (the metrics here are very vague and difficult to distil from which significant information). We went from the CIA not to interest me barely, essentially in every significant government of the world that regularly has legislative or commission meetings to discuss Bitcoin and everything it has generated in terms of macro-economic and geopolitical consequences and how to respond to them. Nations launched cryptocurrencies. Nations have sanctioned the cryptocurrency addresses. I’m officially at the table. In 2010 only an agency that is known to have the nose everywhere was paying attention (which we know), now the whole world is paying attention.
Things have changed. How the metaphor goes, good luck stopping the train.
(This is only part 1 of 4, read the next part tomorrow).
This is a post for Shinobi guests. The opinions expressed are entirely proper and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.