Altcoins and altcoins
Because the source code of Bitcoin is public, when it becomes very valuable, some people fork its code, change a few parameters, and create "altcoins". Altcoins often become tools for fraud and pyramid schemes by bad merchants. Altcoin creators often use propaganda and packaging to attract ignorant people to buy, and then cash out at higher prices.
Of course, some people who fork the Bitcoin code have done useful technical exploration and innovation. We often call this type of derivatives "altcoins":
For Bitcoin mining, LiteCoin has been monopolized by mining machines and mining pools. It is trying to use scypt algorithm (memory difficulty) to replace the sha256 algorithm used by Bitcoin to resist mining machines and try to keep cryptocurrency Decentralization (Although the Litecoin mining machine was still invented after more than a year, the Litecoin attempt is worthy of recognition, so the market has the saying that "bit is gold and Wright is silver");
NameCoin (NameCoin) in response to the doubt that some people think that Bitcoin is "useless". NameCoin provides a distributed domain name resolution system. Its dedicated domain name is .bit. The domain name management is not provided by traditional DNS servers, but Distributed on the blockchain, it is beneficial to guarantee freedom of speech and privacy (in 2015, Domain Coin expanded blockchain services to the field of identity authentication);
PrimeCoin targets many people's criticism that Bitcoin mining is a waste of energy. PrimeCoin transforms the mining process into finding prime numbers (prime numbers), becoming scientific calculations like BONIC, and it also allows accounts that provide computing resources to have The return of digital currency;
Hunter Coin (HunterCoin) is the first attempt to mine by playing games. This game is hunters looking for gold coins on the map. Its purpose is to solve Bitcoin by playing games by people who cannot be replaced by machines. The two problems of "monopoly of computing power" and "uselessness" (but unfortunately, it didn't take long for game plug-ins to be invented);
DarkCoin (DarkCoin) uses cryptography to the extreme, mixing 11 kinds of encryption algorithms, trying to solve the problem of "computing power monopoly" through complex mining algorithms.
Some people think that POW (Proof of Work, proof of work mechanism) has caused some problems with Bitcoin, especially the problem of wasting energy, so they started to try POS (Proof of Stake, proof of stake mechanism)
Nextcoin is the first digital currency to adopt POS mechanism;
PPCoin uses a combination of POW and POS to try to make the blockchain network both energy-saving and safe. In addition, on the basis of POS, a DPOS (Proof of Share Authorization Mechanism) mechanism has been developed, which is similar to the actual parliamentary system and can only be booked by elected representative nodes.
Chaos and development
In the development process of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, because money is involved, a lot of chaos will inevitably arise: various botched, untechnical scams are emerging in an endless stream (MLM and fraud); users' wallet key files are stolen by Trojan horses Go; the exchange goes bankrupt (the world's largest bitcoin exchange MT.GOX declared bankruptcy in early 2014), run away (the management of the GBL exchange registered in Hong Kong, China absconded with money), falsified transaction records, misappropriated users funds;
In order to pursue profit, some people use public equipment to mine (Harvard University researchers use supercomputers to mine, a local government computer room contractor on the bitcointalk forum consults how to make a plan that looks like a computer is actually a mining machine); the trading market has also been developed Leverage, futures and other new financial gameplays, use human nature to tap interests;
Due to the anonymity and global flow characteristics of Bitcoin, some online gambling sites use Bitcoin as a bargaining chip and have also become a channel for money laundering (because Bitcoin actually also has the characteristics of traceability, there are businesses that provide "coin laundering" services. For example, many large amounts of stolen bitcoins flowed to Bitcoin Fog for currency mixing. Recently, Zcash is a digital currency that claims to rely on "zero-knowledge proof" to achieve true privacy protection), in the infamous "Silk Road (SilkRoad)” website, there used to be a large amount of Bitcoin used to buy illegal items such as drugs, guns, credit cards and personal information. Because the “Silk Road” website uses “onion network (tor)” and PGP encryption, it cannot be Authorities controlled that until the end of 2013, the FBI captured its operator and shut down the website ("SilkRoad 2.0" appeared briefly afterwards, and recently there have also been blockchain-based decentralized trading market projects, such as ZeroNet).
It is true that interests are causing the rebirth of the chaos in the Bitcoin world, but it is also driven by economic interests that enable Bitcoin technology to solve the "Byzantine Generals Problem", making the trust between strangers and the consensus of the whole network become may. Therefore, technical problems still have to be solved by technology.
In order to solve the problem of the security of funds, the preacher advocates storing large amounts of Bitcoin in their own node wallets, instead of actually centralized exchanges or "cloud wallets", recommend cold backup of large wallet files, and popularize offline signatures Technology, so there are "cold wallets" and "hot wallets", and then derived "hardware wallets" and "brain wallets."
Bitcoin, as a piece of software, faces the biggest challenge, which actually comes from its own technology: In August 2010, someone exploited a large integer overflow vulnerability to "dig out" 184.4 billion Bitcoins. Developers quickly upgraded the software and started the hard drive. Forking, the crisis was resolved; in March 2013, the Bitcoin network was forked due to the incompatibility between version 0.8 and version 0.7 of the consensus mechanism. After the community reached consensus within a few hours, the mining pool temporarily returned to version 0.7 for resolution. Problem.
As a network with a market value of hundreds of millions, it is subjected to various attacks such as DDos every day. Hackers from all walks of life want to crack it, but in the past eight years, there are only these two major technical accidents, which can be resolved quickly. The security of the blockchain network.
Blockchain deposit certificate
While some people are developing Bitcoin as a free currency, others noticed the underlying technology of Bitcoin: On January 4, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto was on the CoinBase of the genesis block. A paragraph was left: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks", which was the headline of the front page of the Times that day. This paragraph was permanently recorded in the Bitcoin blockchain, except for teasing The government's helplessness during the financial crisis was also claiming that the Bitcoin blockchain can prove records that cannot be tampered with, and the unique "timestamp" of the entire network protocol adds a time dimension to the record.
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