This post originally appeared on ZeMing M. Gao’s website, and we republished with permission from the author. Read the full piece here.
A great post and an instructive dialogue on LinkedIn. A thoughtful question by Michael Fletcher led to Dr. Craig S Wright answering with genuine Satoshi authority.
Genesis does not just mean the beginning. The purpose of calling this the Genesis block relates to the fact that there was nothing but chaos in the beginning. The creation of the Genesis block takes data without form and void as darkness upon the face of the deep. With this, light enters, and the system forms. That is why it is a Genesis block.
An important part of Genesis is that there is only one. There are not hundreds of Genesis blocks. There are no forks of the Genesis block or alternatives. We are in one world, and equally, there will be one Blockchain.
The use of Forth primitives in the scripting language allows anything to be coded. So, there are provisions for future changes already. There are codes that are under deployed that are reserved for future cryptographic algorithms in the event that SHA 256 is compromised or that ECDSA becomes obsolete. These will not remove the ability to use these earlier cryptographic primitives rather add to them. For instance, MD5 and SHA1 are each available within the protocol right now.
The ability to integrate these is incredibly flexible. In addition, if you program a higher-level language on top of the low-level language available in bitcoin, you will create something far more powerful.
Finally, BIP are unneeded. These were always completely unnecessary additions[, the only purpose of which was] for developers to try and seize power.
With a fixed protocol that does anything you need. That is, anything computable can be done, and bitcoin can achieve this, you have the capacity to build systems based on overlay networks that act independently while securely indexing information. The end result is a system that can do more than Ethereum yet also retain all of the security benefits and scalability that Bitcoin always promised and always can deliver.
– Dr. Craig S. Wright
People get nervous hearing about something being “set in stone” because it sounds like it will have a closed and unfixable future. But it is a principle of cybernetics that a complex system needs a stable unity at the base purpose level in order to support a healthy variety at application levels.
The Internet is a great example. It is the stable unity at the Internet Protocol (IP) level (and to a large degree at TCP transport level as well) that made the system not only stable but also flexible. One Internet, unlimited applications. Not the other way around: many internets, few applications (if this sounds strange, it does not once you translate it to the sad ‘crypto’ reality:many blockchains, few applications).
Even the universe is created based on the principle that the law is set with absolute stable unity, while the existence based on the law has unlimited variety. The unlimited variety is possible because of, not in spite of, the stable unity of the law.
Of course, when it comes to systems created by a human being, there’s always a possibility that its genesis is ‘genetically’ deficient or even fatally flawed. Therefore, despite the inventor’s high confidence that the base protocol can be ‘set in stone’ upon the release, experimentation by others even at the root level is expected to happen. But such experimentation, if there is any, cannot last indefinitely. The system either dies or thrives, and the truth emerges, one way or the other, at a certain point of time.
When it comes to Bitcoin, the period for experimentation at the root protocol level has already passed, at least a few years ago.
But even with an expansive view allowing experimentation, the actual history of Bitcoin is a perverted one. With BTC, the issue was not whether others experimented different protocols, but how the changes were made, and on what chain the changes were made. Satoshi open-sourced the Bitcoin code, but not the database. Therefore, those who wanted to experiment could create a new chain and a new database using the code, and call it something else (for example, Litecoin is such an implementation). Therefore, if you look at BTC as an experimental deviant from Bitcoin, the following is what should have happened:
The Core should have publicly announced no later than 2012 that they disagreed with Satoshi, and wanted to experiment a different version (using a different name and a different database). Small blocks. Abstract decentralization. Anarchic democracy. Ponzinomic economy, etc. Unless they actually break the law, there is no law against that. Satoshi could not stop them even if he hated it. They just needed to be honest with Satoshi and the public. Meanwhile, the original Bitcoin continues as what Satoshi envisioned. And we’d have two different systems, both legitimate, but neither guaranteed to succeed, and only time will prove. That would be a natural evolution.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, deception, dishonesty, destructiveness ruled, artificially suppressing the genuine Bitcoin and the truth about its inventor.
The world will soon thank Satoshi for not only inventing Bitcoin, but also for not giving up when almost the whole world went against him and against the truth about Bitcoin.
Watch: Latif Ladid’s Keynote Speech: IPv6-Based 5G/6g, IoT and Blockchain at the BSV Global Blockchain Convention
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