There are two kinds of information on the blockchain, one is transaction information and the other is witness information. The original blockchain network must bind transaction information and witness information in one block, which occupies a large block capacity. Now that the witness information is packaged separately, not only can more complex financial functions be realized, but the expansion effect can be improved by about 70% without increasing the block capacity.
Although Bitcoin Core wanted to start "Segregated Witness + Lightning Network" without increasing the block capacity, it was opposed by many miners. Most of the miners advocated directly expanding the block or expanding the block while deploying the Lightning Network. .
The Bitcoin community is democratic and decentralized. I have been arguing for different upgrade plans for several years and have not been able to agree on opinions. In February 2016, several developers of the Bitcoin Core team, major mine owners, and Bitcoin peripheral industry companies held a meeting in Hong Kong, my country. At the meeting, both parties took a step back and combined the two solutions to reach a consensus. While deploying Segregated Witness and Lightning Network, the block size of the Bitcoin main chain was increased from 1MB to 2MB. The development was led by Bitcoin Core, called Hong Kong consensus.
However, after several Bitcoin Core developers signed the consensus and went back, other members of the team did not agree with this plan and refused to develop it. After this incident, the relationship between the big mine owners and Bitcoin Core fell into a freezing point.
Since the Bitcoin community has failed to reach a consensus on the expansion and upgrade for many years, a new development team, Bitcoin Unlimited, has emerged in the community. Its research and development direction is an upgrade plan with no upper limit on block capacity, and it has won the support of many miners.
In other words, the Bitcoin network is divided into two groups-those that support large blocks and those that support Lightning Network + Segregated Witness. Most of the people who support large blocks are miners, and the one who supports Lightning Network + Segregated Witness is Bitcoin Core (Bitcoin Core Technical Team).
The occurrence of a hard fork
This divergence eventually led to the hard fork. On August 1, 2017, under the push of Bitmain, Bitcoin had a hard fork, resulting in a new digital currency called Bitcoin Cash. This move opened Pandora's box. Bitcoin is a distributed public ledger, all source code and ledger details are public. In theory, as long as there is a certain technical strength and sufficient computing power, anyone can create a new fork coin based on this ledger.
At the beginning of November 2017, a new bifurcated coin, Bitcoin Diamond, was born. In December 2017, a variety of bifurcated coins such as Super Bitcoin and Lightning Bitcoin appeared. People in the industry even referred to December as "Bitcoin bifurcation". month".