Side chains for everyone!

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Give these two a break, though: their software won't activate until more than ¾ of miners install it (which seems highly unlikely). And for better or worse, they've sparked a debate on the issue. In my opinion, the most reasonable proposal at the moment — rather than changing the package or keeping the 20-year-old changes — is this one from Blockstream president Adam Back:

…and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the compromise that Bitcoin ultimately settles on. What this whole mess has really revealed is that for a revolutionary idea that has spawned countless startups and a billion-dollar cryptocurrency, Bitcoin’s overall governance is purely instinctual.


Speaking of Blockstream, the Bitcoin backend list of bahrain cell phone numbers infrastructure startup I've been excited about for a long time, they recently released their first sidechain , Liquid. And it's pretty remarkable.

Sidechains are additional blockchains whose underlying elements are fully mathematically compatible with Bitcoin, but operate under their own rules. For example, you could create a sidechain that supports private transactions (all Bitcoin transactions are pseudonymous but completely public), or one that finalizes transactions much faster than Bitcoin itself. Or even one that does both… i.e. Liquid.

I wouldn't call it a sidechain per se, though. Transfers to and from it require confirmation by a consortium of participants. This will be mandatory unless and until the Bitcoin protocol is changed to add a new type of instruction and make confirmation automatic. (Reminder: every Bitcoin transaction is actually a program written in the Bitcoin language. That language needs to be more extensible to support sidechains.)

Bitshares and Lightning

Speaking of smart contracts — perhaps the single most interesting and revolutionary thing about Bitcoin, the feature that makes it not just cryptographically scarce but programmable — there have been some interesting developments here, too. Bitshares, a (blockchain-based but separate from Bitcoin) “industrial-grade smart contract platform,” launched version 2.0 on October 13. It offers a cornucopia of different “features.”