History of the most famous Bitcoin split

 History of the most famous Bitcoin split

In early 2009, a mysterious software developer, with the alias “Satoshi Nakamoto,” released a program to create bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency.

Since then, Bitcoin has gained immense traction around the world and inspired thousands of other digital currencies.

Many of these cryptocurrencies use technologies already ingrained in the initial Satoshi program and its concept.

Others take the Bitcoin model and adapt it to them or try to improve it via what is known as forks

What is Bitcoin Hard Forks?

The term bitcoin hard forks refer to a drastic change in the bitcoin blockchain protocol that effectively results in two forks, one following the previous protocol and one following the new version.

During the fork, the software that implements the Bitcoin and its mining procedures is upgraded, and once the user upgrades their software, that version rejects all transactions from the old software, creating a new branch of the entire blockchain.

Through this branching process, different digital currencies with names similar to Bitcoin are created, including Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold.

Bitcoin Cash is still the most successful Bitcoin fork, at the time of the article's publication Bitcoin Cash ranks 13th in terms of total market capitalization.

Through this branching process, different cryptocurrencies with names similar to Bitcoin have been created, and these splits include:

Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold.

For the average cryptocurrency investor, it can be difficult to tell the difference between these cryptocurrencies and their underlying assets on a timeline.

Below, we will review several of the most significant forks that have occurred in the Bitcoin blockchain over the past several years.

The nature of the divisions:

In 2009, shortly after the launch of Bitcoin, Satoshi mined the first block on the Bitcoin blockchain.

This has come to be referred to as the “Genesis Block” as it represents the founding of cryptocurrency as we know it.

Satoshi was able to make several changes to the Bitcoin network early in the process, becoming increasingly more difficult after the Bitcoin user base grew by an enormous margin.

The fact that no person or group can decide when and how Bitcoin should be upgraded is that the process of updating the system is a much more complicated process than it sounds.

In the years since the Genesis Block, there have been many hard forks.

In addition to the hard forks, cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, are also subject to soft forks.

The difference between hard forks and soft forks is that the latter does not produce a new currency.

The light or soft fork is a change in the Bitcoin protocol, but the end product remains unchanged.

As the soft splits are backward compatible.

While a hard fork is a software that implements Bitcoin and its mining procedures, and once the user upgrades their software, this version rejects all transactions from the old software, effectively creating a new branch of the blockchain.

Legacy users who keep the legacy software continue to process transactions, which means that there is a parallel set of transactions going through two different chains.

Bitcoin split timeline:

Bitcoin XT:

Bitcoin XT was one of the first hard forex Bitcoin. 

The program was launched by Mike Hearn in late 2014 in order to include many new features that he suggested. 

While the previous version of Bitcoin allowed up to seven transactions per second, Bitcoin XT was intended to perform 24 transactions per second. 

To achieve this, I proposed increasing the block size from one megabyte to eight megabytes

Bitcoin XT saw success initially, with over 1,000 nodes running its network in late summer 2015.

But only a few months later, the project lost users' interest and was basically abandoned by its users.

Bitcoin XT is no longer available, with its original website now discontinued.

Bitcoin Classic:

When Bitcoin XT was rejected, some community members 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 eight megabytes, Bitcoin Classic's goal was to increase the block size to just 2 megabytes.

Like Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic saw initial interest, with around 2,000 nodes for several months through 2016 and the project still exists today, with some developers strongly backing Bitcoin Classic.

But it seems that the larger cryptocurrency community has generally moved on to other options.

Bitcoin Unlimited:

Bitcoin Unlimited has remained a mystery since its release in early 2016.

The developers of the project released a code but did not specify what type of fork it would require.

Bitcoin Unlimited differentiates itself by allowing miners to specify the size of their blocks, with nodes and miners limiting the size of blocks they accept, up to 16 megabytes.

Despite some continued interest in the project, it largely failed to gain acceptance.

SegWit Upgrade:

Segregated Witness (SegWit) was introduced by developer Peter Weil in late 2015.

Simply put, the SegWit upgrade aims to reduce the size of each bitcoin transaction, thus allowing more transactions to take place simultaneously.

SegWit was technically a lane split.

Bitcoin Cash:

In response to SegWit, some Bitcoin developers and users decided to start a split to avoid the protocol updates it brought about.

Bitcoin Cash was the result of this hard fork.

Bitcoin Cash broke off from the major blockchain in August 2017, when Bitcoin Cash wallets declined with Bitcoin money and blocks.

Bitcoin Cash remains the most successful fork of the underlying cryptocurrency.

The digital currency Bitcoin Cash has become the thirteenth largest by market capitalization, due in part to the support of many prominent figures in the cryptocurrency community and many popular trading platforms for it.

Bitcoin Cash allows blocks of 8 megabytes and does not support the "SegWit" protocol.

Bitcoin Gold:

Bitcoin Gold was a fork of Bitcoin Cash, which was revealed in October 2017.

The creators of this coin aimed to restore the functionality of mining with graphics processing units (GPUs), as they felt that mining had become very specialized in terms of the hardware and hardware required.

Although it was initially possible to mine Bitcoin using personal laptops and desktop computers, the increasing difficulty of mining, as well as the emergence of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) devices created specifically for Bitcoin mining, made it impossible to mine Bitcoins fully. profitable.

Some Bitcoin forks, including Bitcoin Gold, have attempted to make Bitcoin accessible by changing the hardware needed to establish a network connection.

SegWit2x:

When SegWit was implemented in August 2017, the developers planned for a second component to upgrade the protocol.

This add-on is known as SegWit2x.

SegWit2x was scheduled to take place in November 2017 as a new split.

However, a number of companies and individuals in the Bitcoin community who originally supported the SegWit protocol decided to back out of the fork.

To some extent, the backlash was the result of SegWit2x including reboot protection (instead of mandatory); This could have had a huge impact on the types of transactions the new upgrade would accept.

On November 8, 2017, the team behind SegWit2x announced that the planned fork had been canceled due to inconsistencies between the project's previous backers.