MNP, Canada’s fifth-largest professional services firm, has published a report examining the original vision of the Bitcoin protocol, concluding the Bitcoin SV (BSV) is the most closely aligned with Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision.
The chartered professional accountancy and business consulting firm looked at the original whitepaper, and compared the current expressions of BTC and BSV to determine which blockchain, if either, represented the true original vision for Bitcoin.
The research report from @MNP_LLP into the original Bitcoin protocol compared and contrasted two competing implementations: #BTC & #BSV.
We unpack the key differences and analyse the conclusions reached in our latest piece.
https://t.co/e8Zqylccsu— Bitcoin Association (@BitcoinAssn) August 31, 2021
The report, titled “The Original Bitcoin Protocol: What is it and Why Does it Matter?,” found the BSV enterprise blockchain to be the truest implementation, in line with the model described by Satoshi back in 2008.
Based on our review Bitcoin was intended to be a transaction network for digital cash to compete as a global payment system. Current implementations (Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Core) were compared against that original vision. Our findings indicate that Bitcoin SV is most representative of Satoshi Nakamoto’s original intention for Bitcoin.
The report details how BTC has gone through numerous twists and turns, sporadically jumping from its initial focus as a system for P2P payments, into some kind of hybrid store of value or digital gold type model. Through its development cycle, the protocol has held artificially to a 1MB block size, which limits the scope for its use beyond, and even within, these core functions.
Bitcoin SV by contrast takes a big block view, with the artificial block size limit removed entirely. The report found BSV developers have already done much of the work in restoring the original concepts espoused by Satoshi Nakamoto, creating channels for scale and transaction throughput as well as sticking to low transaction fees.
The report identifies 14 fundamental areas of Satoshi’s original vision, which it then compares against the current state of both BTC and BSV.
Independent of Trusted Third Parties: Neither BTC nor BSV currently meet this threshold from the whitepaper, with both reliant on third-party exchanges to purchase tokens, beyond those mined in-house or received as payment.
Incentive Mechanism: BSV wins out in the incentive mechanism, processing free transactions, as well as providing the same levels of incentives for mining and transaction fees as with BTC, one clear edge for BSV in more closely aligning with the whitepaper vision.
Scalable Transactions: A hard fail for BTC here, which is only capable of a maximum of 7 transactions per second. With BSV, there is no limit to the scale potential – truly unbounded scale and throughput capacity, thanks to the lack of any artificial block size limit.
Timestamp Server: Both blockchains utilize timestamp servers, as per the specification in the whitepaper.
Proof-of-work Mechanism: Both blockchains utilize the proof-of-work mechanism as set out in the whitepaper.
Network Rules: Both blockchains utilize network rules appropriately, as set out in the Satoshi whitepaper.
Security: Both blockchains meet the security protocols, using securing hashing algorithms in line with the original whitepaper.
Reliability: Another win for BSV, with free transactions processed without fail. Contrarily, on the BTC blockchain free transactions can never be processed, which creates network unreliability.
Scalability: BSV is the only blockchain truly capable of supporting mass adoption as Satoshi intended. With support for truly unbounded scale, versus the hard limit artificially imposed on BTC, this is another area where BSV wins out.
Maintainability: While BSV brings together an organized group of developers engaged by global non-profit entities, there is still work to be done on achieving the level of maintainability set out in the original whitepaper. The same is true of BTC, though this exhibits many more disagreements, hard forks, and other challenges within the community.
Blocksize: The block size for BSV is theoretically unlimited, with no restriction on how big blocks can go. By contrast, BTC is artificially limited at just 1MB, making it practically useless for use at scale.
Energy Requirements: BSV also beats BTC in terms of the energy consumption requirements. As the size of the block increases, the amount of energy required decreases, making BSV much more energy efficient. By contrast, BTC goes in the opposite direction, increasing energy requirements with network scale.
Difficulty: Both blockchains rely on the difficulty formula set out in the whitepaper.
Opcodes and Scripting: BSV still carries the original opcodes, allowing for complex scripting and smart contracts. By contrast, BTC has long since switched off support for many of the opcodes that developers need and want to make Bitcoin work for their needs.
In assessing how both blockchains compare against the whitepaper vision, MNP comes to the conclusion that only BSV is close to carrying forward the legacy of the original Bitcoin.
The authors of the report highlight the many different ways blockchain technology can have a positive and sizable impact on the future, giving rise to an unprecedented number of new industries and services. From supporting micropayments and autonomous contracts to digital ID management and distributed data storage, Bitcoin is changing the game—but only in the original image as expressed by its inventor, Dr. Craig Wright, back in 2008.
While BTC remains the Bitcoin implementation of choice for speculation and anonymous transactions, BSV is fast becoming the chosen blockchain for enterprise applications—the infrastructure underneath new developments and applications unlocking and igniting the power of data. Currently, the BSV enterprise blockchain is the world’s largest public blockchain by all major utility metrics such as data storage and daily transaction volume, as well as scaling ability and average block size.
By adhering to the original model as Satoshi intended, as backed up by the MNP report, BSV is emerging as the enterprise blockchain of choice for more effective development.
Watch: CoinGeek Zurich presentation, ‘We are BSV’: Igniting the power of BSV blockchain
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