No, BlackRock Won’t Ossify Bitcoin

Follow Aaron connected Nostr oregon X.

In his Take from Wednesday, Shinobi argued that the surge of organization bitcoin adoption volition pb to premature ossification of the Bitcoin protocol. While I stock his interest to an extent, I americium little convinced this is needfully true.

Bitcoin is inherently a permissionsless system. For protocol changes specifically, it “just” requires users to upgrade their software. And erstwhile it comes to deploying brushed forks, it truly lone needs a bulk of miners to upgrade. (This is admittedly a simplification for the involvement of brevity, but I’d accidental it’s inactive “true enough” to authorities it this way.)

Miners volition for the astir portion travel economical incentives. If a protocol upgrade makes Bitcoin (say) much scalable oregon much private, determination is really bully crushed to deliberation this would marque Bitcoin much valuable, which successful crook means determination is bully crushed to deliberation miners volition activate the upgrade.

Even successful an utmost script wherever a brushed fork occurs done a idiosyncratic activated brushed fork (UASF) that splits the blockchain, and adjacent if successful this script the institutions similar the non-upgraded mentation of the concatenation (this is the script Shinobi is yet envisioning), it’s not evident to maine that the non-upgraded concatenation would “win”.

Just owning tons of bitcoin does not springiness you a “say” connected which broadside of a concatenation divided is much valuable. Initially, everyone receives coins connected some sides. Only if you’re consenting to bargain oregon merchantability these coins (eg.: “dump” coins connected 1 broadside of the divided to get much coins connected the different side) does your economical value matter. But this means you person to instrumentality a risk: tegument successful the game.

Would large institutions truly beryllium consenting to stake everything they ain connected the mentation of the protocol without the upgrade? That’s a large presumption to make.

This nonfiction is simply a Take. Opinions expressed are wholly the author's and bash not needfully bespeak those of BTC Inc oregon Bitcoin Magazine.