War Era Variant Core Bitcoin. After the emergence of speculation Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin's scalability debate was increasingly tapered. Until finally most of the core developers decided to make an open letter. This letter, addressed to the entire Bitcoin community.
The purpose of this open letter, is to inform the entire Bitcoin community, to attend two workshops, namely in Montreal on 12-13 September 2015, and also in Hong Kong in December 2015.
At least, on the open letter, has been signed by approximately 30 developers Bitcoin Core, except Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn who finally decided to be absent. The major theme of the workshop was "Scalling Bitcoin". Specifically, later in the workshop, is the focus of discussing the debate. Trying to find the expected solution can be more significant to bring about the best change.
However, it seems, meetings, workshops did not also get unanimous agreement. Debate over limit block, still seems to be deadlocked. Meanwhile, some Core developers themselves also keep updating the latest version of Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin XT is still running. The Bitcoin XT node is also growing, but unfortunately it is not able to meet the expectations it should. Evidently, throughout September to January 2016, only 10% of the total node only.
However, the emergence of the variant Bitcoin XT, is the initial door, warfare variant Core Bitcoin. So it can not be denied, that there have been factions in the Bitcoin community, which emerged as a real condition of an entity that is without any centrality.
Conditions like Bitcoin core battle, written in several articles uploaded in many online media. As in Junseth.com, bitcoin magazine, and many others. An article in junseth.com with the title, Blockchains Are War, illustrates the slick narrative of how a decentralized technology with its spearhead, Blockchain faces a fairly complex problem.
Since the elements are full of interest from the big capital owners, in the end it seeks to take part in it. Until, the world ecosystem of Blockchain was inevitably become full of interest. Many large industries, such as Goldman Sachs, Nasdag to JPMorgan, began to take a glance and try to take on the role that is considered quite prospectual and very profitable.
War era of bitcoin core variants, has been marked since the emergence of Bitcoin XT, consequently, when the debate did not also have a bright spot, appears again a variant of Bitcoin core called Bitcoin Classic. Until shortly thereafter, another variant appeared, with the name Bitcoin Unlimited.
The emergence of several variants of the core Bitcoin, generally has been marked by the advent of Bitcoin development proposal. Several proposals have emerged and underlies the block block change design, as in BIP 100, 101, 102, 103, 109, and also BUIP 001.
In general, all BIP's are proposals for raising Block limits. Likewise the case with Bitcoin Classic, which started since the BIP 109. In BIP 109, is the proposal for hardfork, and increase the size of block limit to 2mb.
Bitcoin Classic, appearing almost the same as Bitcoin XT, appears as an option when the endless bitcoin boundary debate debate encounters a bright spot. Is TomZ Zender, who developed the Bitcoin Classic. He, doing this Bitcoin Classic forking from Bitcoin Core code.
Can not be known for sure, when detail time forking Bitcoin Classic is done until then developed. But it can be ascertained, that the appearance of Bitcoin Classic earlier than Bitcoin Unlimited. Because, Bitcoin Unlimited this, is the result of forking also from Bitcoin Core, and adopted from Bitcoin Classic as well.
Certainly, what distinguishes Bitcoin Classic with Bitcoin Core, is because of its block block capacity of 2 megabytes. So that means, the maximum transaction that can be processed with core classic is also doubly than the original Bitcoin Core which has a block limit of less than 1 megabyte only.
The appearance of Bitcoin Classic, supposedly has quite a lot of support from some bitcoin core developers, such as Jeff Garzik and Gavin Andresen. In addition, some big companies that are involved in the world Bitcoin also support, because it is definitely with Bitcoin Classic, will be quite a lot of useful and gain greater profit. Some companies are like Coinbase, Bitstamp, Circle as well as Roger Ver. Later, Roger Ver is actually the most enthusiastic will appear behind Bitcoin Unlimited.
After appearing Bitcoin Classic, era of bitcoin core variant battle continues. Until then there is another forking again from the core Bitcoin, namely Bitcoin Unlimited. Andrew Stone is a developer at Bitcoin Unlimited. Although Bitcoin Unlimited takes the same branch on the Bitcoin Core code, however, it also adopts some things from Bitcoin Classic.
The outline, on Bitcoin Unlimited (then abbreviated as BU abbreviation) will assume a new valid block despite being more than 1 megabyte. So slightly different from the Classic that has been determined amount of blocknya limit is less than 2 mb.
Andrew Stone himself, had previously made a proposal for the development of Bitcoin. If the proposal on the development of bitcoin cores is generally referred to as BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal), but on the proposal Andrew Stone called BUIP 001, on September 26, 2015.
There has been a lot of controversy since BU released their stable version on March 14, 2017. It can be said that the emergence of BU has attracted the attention of many people. This is mainly because it is supported by several bitcoin mining pools, such as Bitcoin.com, BTC.TOP, GBMiner, and also ViaBTC.
Shortly thereafter, one of Bitcoin's big pools, Antpool, suddenly also changed direction, and joined also support and switch to BU. Since then, more and more pairs of eyes on the BU. Especially if Antpool, is owned by ASIC developer (Bitmain) which has been dominating many Bitcoin mining equipment.
This of course makes a pretty fundamental concern. The most important reason is certainly the potential to be centralized Bitcoin mining ecosystem. If this happens, then of course, a number of major problems will arise, unlocking the potential for a massive 51% attack attack.
However, it turns out, on the development of Bitcoin Unlimited cores, is not as good as expected. A number of other problems and controversies began to surface. A number of controversies began on August 26, 2016, when one saw that the Bitcoin Classic node was in forking on the BigBlock test. Tesnet is generally a separate network Bitcoin, to test only.
The problem arises, when one of the nodes of the bitcoin.com pool, starts producing new blocks of considerable size. This of course will ultimately conflict with existing protocols. Thus, the proposed BIP 109 becomes a conflicting transaction on the Bitcoin network.
Subsequently, Maxwell attempted to ask Roger Ver about the incident. While Andrew Stone himself just questioned why it can be said Bitcoin Unlimited considered to violate existing rules. It was at this point that it was finally discovered that bitcoin.com, Roger Ver's pool had switched to BU.
Maxwell also tried to show url link transactions that are considered violate the BIP 109. He considered, at the event, will eventually lead to the emergence of other branches in blockchain. But, again Andrew Stone does not think it's different. Andrew Stone said:
“I haven’t even bothered to find out the exact cause. We have had BUIP016 passed to adhere to strict BIP109 compatibility (at least in what we generate) by merging Classic code, but BIP109 is DOA — so no-one bothered to do it.
I think that the only value to be had from this episode is to realise that consensus rules should be kept to an absolute, money-function-protecting minimum. If this was on mainnet, I’ll be the Classic users would be unhappy to be forked onto a minority branch because of some arbitrary limit that is yet another thing would have needed to be fought over as machine performance improves but the limit stays the same.”
Stone continues to deny that BU is the result of Bitcoin Classic forking and uses BIP109 which ultimately violates the consensus of valid block transactions, although that only happens on the Tesnet network only.
The real picture, the core variant of Bitcoin Classic and Unlimited, is indeed a gap of attack. Many assumptions with the above events, assessing the inability of developers from Bitcoin Unlimited.
Furthermore, on November 17, 2016, Andrew Stone published an article on medium.com about Bitcoin Core, entitled "A Short Tour Of Bitcoin Core". In his article, he claims that the Bitcoin Unlimited core version is the best and most stable. But Gregory Maxwell, stated and said:
“Perhaps the biggest and most concerning danger here isn’t that they don’t know what they’re doing– but that they don’t know what they don’t know… to the point where this is their best attempt at criticism.”
Maxwell's words, is a scathing criticism on BU developers. He thinks BU developers have done things they do not know for sure. But still, the criticism does not make BU able to take lessons.
Since released version 1.0 BU on January 27, 2017, began to see the reality of why many people in BU developers. Characterized by the appearance of bugs on core BU. There is a coinbase deal on a block larger than 1mb, which comes from Roger Ver's pool, bitcoin.com.
The block size difference, of course, will eventually be rejected by the Bitcoin Core node. Andrew Stone also claimed to have made many improvements over it. And stated that bug in BU, no longer exists.
It could be said that the incident was like an attempt to take over the Bitcoin network with the HardFork process. War era of bitcoin core variants are still increasingly tapered. And again, there are some conditions that increasingly indicate that the core BU many problems occur.
Unlimited Bitcoin Node drop in just a few minutes
Precisely on March 14, 2017, almost 75% of the BU node suddenly crashed in just a few minutes. But it seems, even Andrew Stone was not aware of it. He even thinks that the possibility of a decrease in Bitcoin Core is also about 5%. Furthermore he also commented on the Reddit forum, that the decline in the BU node, occurs due to an attack. Andrew Stone said:
“The Bitcoin Unlimited team found the issue, identified it as an attack and fixed the problem before the Core team chose to ignore it.”
On the occasion, the BU tried to corner PeterTodd, the developer Bitcoin Core, who is considered the person behind the attack node BU. This starts from tweets PeterTode which explains that the BU attacks. In fact, PeterTood tweet, a few hours after the attack occurred. In the bitcoin forums, as well as PeterTodd himself, presenting evidence that dev BU has lied a lot, and manipulating the facts, including those who claim that PeterTodd is the character behind the BU problem.
The debate over the limit block is increasingly rolling in 2017. It could be in the era of war Bitcoin core variants of this, will appear again several other variants of the core. Moreover, later there are indications of a split for Bitcoin Unlimited, including also bergulirnya discourse that BU will become Altcoin.
