Unlimited, Classic and ‘BitPay Core’: Bitcoin’s New Kids on the Blockchain

By January 13, 2016Bitcoin Business

Referred to as the Satoshi client, Bitcoin QT, Bitcoin Core , or simply Bitcoin’s reference client, the original Bitcoin implementation as introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto has always set the standard for Bitcoin’s consensus rules. While alternative implementations were launched over the years, these were programmed to follow or even enforce existing conduct.

Bitcoin XT , the Bitcoin implementation by recent R3CEV -hire Mike Hearn, was a first attempt to break with that concept. Regarded a controversial move by many, Bitcoin XT is programed to break existing consensus rules in order to increase Bitcoin’s block-size limit from 1 megabyte to 8 megabytes, set to double every other year until it reaches 8 gigabytes. So far, Bitcoin XT has failed to gain sufficient adoption among the mining community.

But its intended strategy does seem to have started a trend. Over the past weeks and months, three additional Bitcoin implementations were introduced, all with the intention of breaking Bitcoin’s existing consensus rules in order to set a new block-size limit.

Bitcoin Unlimited

Bitcoin Unlimited , a fork of Bitcoin Core, was the first of three new Bitcoin implementations set to increase the block-size limit, and is maintained by lead developer Andrew “thezerg” Stone. Dr. Peter R. Rizun, aspiring managing editor for Ledger , the first peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency research, is prominently involved with Bitcoin Unlimited as well.

Rizun, in particular, rose to fame within the Bitcoin community as one of the loudest voices in favor or a block-size limit increase, after publishing a controversial paper claiming a block-size limit is not required to establish a fee market.

Bitcoin Unlimited’s main differentiator, as the name suggests, is the absence of a hard-coded block-size limit. Instead, it allows users to manually set this limit on their own nodes; the Bitcoin Unlimited […]

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