The former COO of bitcoin social network ZapChain, Dan Cawrey is a Silicon Valley-based writer specializing in emerging technologies such as bitcoin and virtual reality.
Here, Cawrey argues that the bitcoin ecosystem should embrace competition, but create a standards body so that such competition can be properly encouraged and managed. Successful businesses compete for winning technology standards all the time. In most of these battles, one standard eventually emerges victorious. The winning standard succeeds because it becomes best option after a hard-fought battle.
This same standards rivalry needs to start happening within bitcoin software development. There needs to be competitive core development teams. In addition, there needs to be some sort of proper industry oversight.
Without this, bitcoin faces extinction because it now needs to iterate. It needs to scale badly. Bitcoin’s adolescence
Probably the best description for what is happening within bitcoin recently came from TechCrunch columnist Jon Evens, who wrote that he believes bitcoin, and derivative technologies like blockchain, "are still in their gangly antisocial adolescence".
This is fitting, given Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s new argument on bitcoin’s longstanding block size issue in which he alleged that some Bitcoin Core developers " lack maturity ".
To remedy this issue, Armstrong believes it is time for competition in bitcoin development so the technology can push forward.
This has been widely viewed as contentious by members of the community, but perhaps it shouldn’t be.All industries face competitive forces. It’s proven strong rivalries create better products. Bitcoin should also have competition, just as other popular platforms do. Porter’s five forces in effect for bitcoin: Suppliers are miners, buyers are bitcoin stakeholders, substitutes are off-chain alternatives and new entrants are existing finance. Rivalries are what drives innovation. It is what has given us the highest quality technology at the lowest cost possible.For example, there’s Betamax […]
