The Genesis Hard Fork, which will return Bitcoin SV (BSV) as closely as possible to the original protocol Satoshi Nakamoto designed for it, is just a few weeks away. To prepare the world for this major event, the Bitcoin Association has put out a video from their founding president, Jimmy Nguyen, to explain why this important event is necessary, and what potential it will unlock for the Bitcoin blockchain.
As Nguyen first points out, the Genesis hard fork, scheduled for February 4, 2020, will restore Bitcoin to its original protocol as closely as possible and enable a fully on chain world. That means removing much of the unnecessary changes made over time as others tried to make it into something that wasn’t Bitcoin, and removing the limits that prevented it from reaching its potential.
The goal is to make BSV into the single global public blockchain capable of handling data, transactions and digital activity, much in the same vein as the world operates on a global, public Internet. Genesis helps BSV achieve that by bringing back Satoshi’s design. Through three important changes, it will allow BSV to become the world’s peer to peer electronic cash, and enterprise blockchain that can power everything. The entire world will be on chain with BSV.
The first of those three changes is removing limits to Bitcoin’s default hard cap for blocksizes, unleashing its potential for unlimited growth. While BSV is already the only blockchain capable of handling enterprise applications at a potential 9,000 transactions per second, removing the cap entirely will allow for “unbounded, infinite potential.” This will allow real enterprise use of Bitcoin, but also give real power to Bitcoin miners, who will decide and manage the consensus of blocksizes based on market forces, and profit from greater transaction fees, replacing block rewards as they diminish over time.
Secondly, Genesis will restore the original Bitcoin protocol and technical power of Satoshi’s original vision. It does this in three ways. First, by removing the artificial limits previously mentioned, both on blocksizes and individual transactions. It will also restore functionality of Bitcoin script, which was removed when Satoshi went into exile. Lastly, it will remove detrimental changes, such as pay to script hash, which broke smart contract functionality. This all creates much more potential, and effectively removes the need for other public blockchains.
Finally, Genesis will stabilize the Bitcoin protocol. As Nguyen notes, this will create “a stable ruleset ensures that a monetary or data transaction performed on the blockchain today will valid in 2, 5 and 100 years from now.” Enterprises will need this stability to build their own applications, as they can only invest in a project where they know protocol changes won’t send them off track.
Although the BSV protocol will be stabilized, Nguyen notes that the BSV node software may continue to get upgrades, as well as the Teranode software that is being designed for enterprise usage by nChain. Ultimately though, the base protocol rules for Bitcoin will stay the same.
To end his video, Nguyen gives thanks to the Bitcoin SV node team for the hard work they’ve put into this hard fork, including Lead Developer Daniel Connolly, Technical Director Steve Shadders, the team at nChain, CoinGeek founder Calvin Ayre, and of course, nChain Chief Scientist Dr. Craig S. Wright for his Satoshi Vision. He concludes:
I’m excited, I’m ready, I hope you are too. It’s time for Genesis, and it’s time to build the network and technology platform Bitcoin was always born to be.
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