Network Fees

Close to 11 Million BTC Haven’t Moved in Over a Year

13/01/2020 by Idelto Editor

According to a new research report published by Digital Asset Data, more than 10 million BTC has been sitting dormant for a whole year. Data shows that unmoved bitcoins account for roughly 60% of the current minted supply and it’s the largest number of dormant coins since the start of 2017.

Also Read: Mining Report Highlights China’s ASIC Manufacturing Improvements and Dominance

10.7 Million BTC Stays Put for a Whole Year

The fintech and cryptocurrency analytics company Digital Asset Data recently published findings that show the number of bitcoins that haven’t moved in a year has touched 10.7 million BTC ($86.4 billion). At press time there is 18.1 million BTC in circulation and the number of untouched coins represents around 60.5% of the current supply. Despite the large number of inactive bitcoins throughout 2019, BTC prices have seen significant volatility throughout the year. Moreover, in 2019 crypto whale watchers witnessed significant increments of BTC being moved from one wallet to another. Not to mention the BTC block subsidy is cutting in half by mid-May and the 10.7 million BTC is the largest number of bitcoins that haven’t moved since the beginning of 2017’s bull run.

In addition to the number of unmoved bitcoins report by Digital Asset Data, in November the research firm Delphi Digital explained that more than 21% of BTC hasn’t moved in the last five years. The 21.6% or 3.8 million BTC is another all-time high for the network and Delphi Digital combed the blockchain’s Unspent Transaction Output (UXTO) data for its findings. “The portion of supply that hasn’t moved in at least one year started the year at 55.6 percent, peaked at the end of April at 60.8 percent, and currently sits at 58.3 percent,” the study notes. As far as two-year numbers are concerned, 38.7% of the circulating supply hasn’t moved in 24 months and that metric increased from 34% when it was recorded in December 2018. The increase of year-to-date percentage gains in terms of unspent coins gives long term holders more market leverage in regards to cyclical movements, Delphi Digital’s report stressed.

“This is one of the things that distinguishes this mini-cycle from true bull and bear cycles, you don’t have long term holders cashing out as prices really take off,” Delphi Digital’s report said. “Long-term holders will dictate cyclical tops and bottoms, but it’s the short-term traders that will have a larger impact on intra-cycle prices as they gauge, among other things, the flow of new money entering the space.”

Bitcoin Address Creation Touches 124 Million, While BTC’s Lifetime Sees $1 Billion in Network Fees

In another report published on January 7, 2020 by the digital currency company Decentralised.co shows the creation of BTC addresses has increased since 2017. Decentralised notes that new addresses averaged 124 million since the 2017 bull run and to date there are “516,000 unique addresses that engage with the Bitcoin blockchain.” The researchers do account for a margin of error when it comes to “throwaway accounts” or temporary addresses. Additionally, similar to the reports mentioned above, Decentralised emphasizes that “fewer individuals are selling their coins, and more are testing [the] waters with small sums.” Decentralised adds:

For a sense of scale, the number of people holding more than 0 bitcoin in Jan 2011 was a mere 70,0000. Today that number is north of 28 million — a 400x growth over the decade.

The report called “Bitcoin’s Growth in Numbers” also underlines that in 2011 the network processed roughly 2 million transactions. To date the BTC network has seen 487 million confirmed transactions that have moved over $7.5 trillion in nominal value. That’s still a far cry from the financial incumbent payment processors ruling the world of payments today. For instance, in 2019 Visa processed roughly 150 million transactions per day while Alibaba settles around 1.5 billion transactions per day.

Another interesting factoid pulled from the Decentralised report is that throughout BTC’s entire lifetime, people have paid around $1 billion in fees. When BTC’s network fees increased significantly when the unconfirmed transaction backlog grew at the height of 2017, a few of those days contributed to the majority of the $1 billion in network fees. “The highest single-day fee burn was on the 22nd of December (2017) when over $22 million worth of Bitcoin was spent in transaction fees alone,” explains the Decentralised report.

What do you think about the number of unmoved bitcoins in one year representing more than 10 million BTC? What do you think about the creation of addresses and the $1 billion in network fees paid during the protocol’s lifetime? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any ideas, software, mining rigs, mining rig manufacturers, websites, concepts, content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Delphi Digital, Digital Asset Data, Decentralised.co, Fair Use, and Twitter.

Did you know you can earn BTC and BCH through Bitcoin Mining? If you already own hardware, connect it to our powerful Bitcoin mining pool. If not, you can easily get started through one of our flexible Bitcoin cloud mining contracts.

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Tokens Built on Bitcoin Cash Are Cheaper to Send Than Those of Rival Networks

09/08/2019 by Idelto Editor

The Benefits of Tokens Built on Bitcoin Cash Outshine the Competition

Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin technology has inspired a lot of innovation spawning a myriad of tokens representing digitized assets. There are now token creation systems on blockchain networks like Omni Layer, Counterparty, and Ethereum. Each framework comes with the cost of sending tokens and right now the Simple Ledger Protocol is one of the cheapest most cost-effective ways to issue and send tokens.

Also read: Meet ‘Spedn’ — A Smart Contract Programming Language for Bitcoin Cash

The Rising Popularity of Tokens Built on Some of the Best Known Blockchains

Over the last few years, tokens have become a big part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Blockchain tokens, colored coins, and the association of real-world and digital assets tied to a secure network have been around for quite some time. In 2012, the Mastercoin protocol whitepaper was published and the author J. R. Willett explained: “The [Bitcoin blockchain] can be used as a protocol layer, on top of which new currency layers with new rules can be built without changing the foundation.” From here, history shows the initial formation of the Mastercoin project which slowly evolved into the Omni protocol.

Tokens Built on Bitcoin Cash Are Cheaper to Send Than Those of Rival Networks — Blockchain systems that have enabled token creation. From left to right: Counterparty, Omni Layer, Ethereum, and the Simple Ledger Protocol.

Other token creation systems appeared later, like Counterparty in 2014 and the Ethereum ERC20 token standard was proposed in late 2015. The Omni Layer protocol is known for issuing one of the most prominent stablecoins to date, Tether (USDT). The Ethereum network had a token explosion after the first ERC20s were released (DAO, Digix, Alethzero), which fueled the initial coin offering (ICO) token craze in 2017. Regardless of the merits of these tokens, there’s no doubt that Ethereum’s ERC20s and Omni’s USDT have made a mark on the crypto ecosystem.

The Migration to Token Creation Systems With Lower Transaction Fees

Tether is an interesting project and recently there’s been news of the project migrating to the Ethereum network. Right now the stablecoin USDT is the seventh largest market valuation at approximately $4 billion. Interestingly, tethers represented within that market valuation are spread across multiple blockchains.

“Tether is working with an exchange to perform a swap from Omni to ERC20 of part of its USDT cold wallet,” Paolo Ardoino, technical director of Tether explained to the public on August 5. Currently, just over half of the USDTs in existence use the Omni Layer system, and more than $1.45 billion are represented as ERC20s. There’s also a little more than $350 million worth of tether tokens between the EOS and Tron blockchains and USDT will also appear on the Algorand network. The reason Tether is likely migrating to other chains is because the cost to send Omni-based tokens is based on the fees derived from the BTC chain. The average BTC fee is currently well above $1 and more recently touched $4-5 per transaction. However, the cheaper ETH fees or the gas to send ERC20s may only be a temporary bandaid.

Currently, the gas needed to push an ERC20 token is between 11-19 U.S. cents and if you’re lucky maybe $0.03 to $0.05 per send. Like BTC, the Ethereum network can suffer from congestion and rising gas prices. On December 4, 2017, the entire cryptocurrency community celebrated all-time price highs, but both BTC and ETH had severe congestion difficulties. That week the Ethereum network was “congested with cats” thanks to the Crypto Kitties project. Crypto Kitties are represented as non-fungible Ethereum tokens. During the second week of January 2018, the average ETH network fee spiked to $3.26 per transaction.

Ethereum’s elevated fees were not nearly as high as BTC’s exponential fee market that spiked well above $50 per transaction during the last week of December 2017. Dynamic fee markets that become unsustainable can essentially neuter token use cases as it becomes infeasible to send tokens that are worth less than the underlying fees to send them. After seeing a large project like Tether move from BTC to ETH, it’s apparent that blockchains that provide both security and low network fees will prevail in the token environment.

Simple Ledger Protocol Tokens Using a DAG and BCH Scriptability Make the System Robust, While New Ideas Could Unleash Miner Enforceable Tokens

Bitcoin Cash and the Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) have the opportunity to strive where other chains lack when it comes to delivering strong token creation. SLP tokens are robust because actions are all recorded onchain, SLP uses the BCH network’s scriptability, and the protocol uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) for lite proofs. Other types of colored coin concepts utilize balance-based ideas, but these require a full node for the most optimal verification. SLP’s DAG is easy to implement into Simplified Payment Verification (SPV, a method for validating transactions included in a block without downloading the entire blockchain) and one can prove the legitimacy of token transactions with ease. Just like ERC20 tokens, SLP creations can be traditional fungible type 1 coins and people can also design non-fungible tokens (NFT1) using the Simple Ledger Protocol as well. In the future, SLP tokens could even be stronger by bringing the full BCH security model to tokens.

The reason BCH proponents like SLP is because the system doesn’t mess with the underlying consensus layer to facilitate the creation of tokens. However, developer Tendo Pein may have found a loophole where developers can combine OP_Checkdatasig spending constraints with OP_Return tokens, making them miner enforceable. Pein is the creator of “Spedn,” a BCH-based programming language that has a syntax similar to the C programming environment. On August 8, Pein published a post that shows that developers could design tokens that are miner enforceable and backed by the processing power behind the BCH network. During the end of the Honest.cash blog post, Pein showed some fancy spending constraints and explains how valid OP_Return tokens could be enforced by consensus. The Spedn creator remarked:

We can further introspect the provided script and check if it matches some pattern, for example – if it contains valid OP_Return metadata in a particular scheme … And in that way, make OP_Return based tokens miner-enforceable.

With SLP Tokens Built on the BCH Chain Congestion and High Fees Could Be a Thing of the Past

Last but not least, SLP tokens are powered by BCH transactions, so the cost (gas) to send SLP created coins is far superior to ERC20s and BTC-based tokens stemming from Omni or Counterparty. The average bitcoin cash (BCH) transaction is between $0.001 to $0.003 per transaction and these cheaper network fees are applied to SLP’s current universe of tokens. So sending 50,000 Spice, Flex, or Honestcoin (USDH) is typically less than a tenth of a U.S. penny.

This opens the debate for skeptics arguing that BCH fees would rise just like BTC or ETH if SLP tokens gained enormous traction, but we’ve seen from statistical data that this wouldn’t be the case. Bitcoin Cash developers have already proved this during the first week of September in 2018 when BCH participants invoked stress tests. In a 24-hour period and with multiple large blocks (over 1MB), BCH miners processed 2.2 million BCH transactions and cleared the mempool with ease the whole day. Observers noticed that BCH network fees (the cost to send a transaction on the chain) remained at $0.001 during the stress tests in September.

In time, the need for token systems that rely on cheap transaction fees to power the token’s movements and infrastructure will become evident. As a result, people aggregating toward building stablecoins, dividend tokens, non-fungible collectibles, extensible game items, and more using the SLP system will bolster the mainchain’s usage. Right now, the SLP ecosystem is still very young and tokens with real-world use cases and value are starting to appear. The big Omni to ERC20 tether swap this past week shows that token systems with low fees continue to be in demand going forward and even cheaper solutions like SLP on the BCH network may be a more attractive option.

What do you think about the fees to send SLP tokens in comparison with ERC20s and BTC-based tokens that stem from Omni or Counterparty? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Simple Ledger Protocol, Omni, Counterparty, Ethereum, ERC20, Tether, Bitinfocharts.com, Tendo Pein and Honest.cash.

Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see what’s happening in the industry.

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Btc.top CEO Highlights the Benefits and ‘Golden Mean’ of Bitcoin Cash

27/07/2019 by Idelto Editor

On July 23, the CEO of Btc.top, Jiang Zhuoer, debated Nchain’s chief scientist Craig Wright in regard to the civil war between BCH and BSV that took place in November. Amid the debate hosted by Bitkan, Zhuoer highlighted the top three advantages tied to the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. During the dialogue, Zhuoer also emphasized that the infrastructure Satoshi Nakamoto left behind is very advanced and can “achieve very high performance” rate using the BCH network.

Also Read: SLP Developers Publish Specs for a Unique Type of Non-Fungible Tokens

Btc.top CEO Jiang Zhuoer Cites the Advantages of the Bitcoin Cash Blockchain and Community

Jiang Zhuoer leads the Chinese mining pool Btc.top, which is one of the top SHA-256 mining operations by hashrate within both the BTC and BCH networks. On July 23, Zhuoer had a debate with Nchain’s Craig Wright, the man who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto. The debate was hosted by Bitkan and started with a separate interview with Zhuoer for 20 minutes, and another private interview with Wright for the same amount of time. Then for another 20 minutes the two debated during a roundtable discussion that allowed them to interact freely. Wright’s stance was filled with BSV gigabyte block size talking points with pro-government Bitcoin themes as well. Zhuoer, however, explained in great detail why he thinks Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has three unique advantages and is following the path Nakamoto intentionally designed.

“I support BCH because BCH implements Nakamoto’s design for Bitcoin — And the title of the Bitcoin white paper is “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, hence, Bitcoin is designed as electronic cash,” Zhuoer responded when asked for the top three unique advantages BCH has compared to other mainstream cryptocurrencies. “The ultimate goal of Bitcoin is to become a world currency, a currency that everyone in the world can use, to bring monetary freedom to the world, so that the money in our hands is not inflated, not restricted by borders, and doesn’t get plundered.” The Btc.top CEO added:

To achieve this goal, Bitcoin needs to expand the block to accommodate more and more users — Nakamoto also made a clear plan to increase the block size.

Two Bull Runs Show BTC’s Weaknesses

Zhuoer insisted that in 2014, the Bitcoin Core (BTC) development team acted stubbornly and were against Nakamoto’s original plan. The disagreement got so elevated that it eventually led Bitcoin to split into two currencies, BTC and BCH, in August 2017. The Btc.top executive said the developments that followed indicated to him that BCH is correct for wanting to expand the block size limit during the dispute.

The hard evidence of this stemmed from the bull run in 2017 when the BTC mempool was congested with tens of thousands of transactions and network fees spiked to between $30-50 per transaction. These issues conflicted with Satoshi’s true vision, Zhuoer asserted, and he doesn’t seem to believe Segregated Witness and the Lightning Network will solve BTC’s problems. Zhuoer stressed:

The lightning network is also almost useless. During the price increase in May 2019, the same congestion appeared as it did previously in 2017 and the transaction fee percentage spiked significantly.

Bitcoin Cash Attributes: Direction, Community Spirit, and Infrastructure

Not only did Zhuoer speak on the subject, he also provided factual data and charts showing the BTC price increase pushing the network’s fees up during the last two price surges. Zhuoer predicts that the bull market that precedes the next halving will see BTC suffering from severe congestion. The pool operator does not believe the scaling concepts Core developers introduced so far will solve the problem before this timeframe. From here, Zhuoer highlighted the top three advantages that are unique to the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem:

The right direction: Decentralized + large block, and a high number of users.
Community spirit: Rational and pragmatic.
Infrastructure: Layered design, onchain trading, and smart contracts that do not interfere with each other.

Zhuoer mentioned how BCH follows the Chinese mantra of “the golden mean,” which means the BTC block size limit is too small and network fees are costly during congestion. On the other hand with BSV, the block size is too big at 2GB and the chain will likely become like EOS, in Zhuoer’s opinion, with only a few centralized nodes. The golden mean of Bitcoin Cash is a path or middle way between the extremes of BTC and BSV.

The mining pool CEO further opined that the developers and community behind BCH are rational and pragmatic because they don’t make “empty promises like Core.” Moreover, Zhuoer insisted that Core’s decentralization method is contradictory when the developers strive to make it so Raspberry Pis can run a whole node, but allow transactions to become expensive. Zhuoer also said that Ethereum suffers from this issue and “the capacity of BCH is larger than ETH.” Zhuoer continued:

BCH can carry the users who can’t stand the congestion of BTC and ETH, and BCH can gradually accumulate its own users to meet a healthy cycle.

Jiang Zhuoer is a well-respected mining pool operator among BCH supporters and many community members will recall his “Hash War” series of posts he wrote last November. At the time, the Btc.top CEO said that if Bitcoin participants have different goals then the protocol “should be forked.” “Let the market choose which one is right,” Zhuoer explained. In the second part of the series Zhuoer said:

Both parties believe that [Bitcoin] should become the global currency of 5 billion people, but the means used by [each development team] are different to achieve this goal.

After listening to Zhuoer’s words, it is clear that he thinks BCH triumphed over the BSV chain and is skeptical of BSV’s 2GB block size. He also called Wright and the BSV path “extreme” and the concept of locking the protocol back to the original 0.1 protocol is “ridiculous” in Zhuoer’s opinion.

Wait wait wait… how many orphaned blocks?!? pic.twitter.com/fiwZHGzBdF

— checksum0 (@checksum0) July 25, 2019

The Bitcoin Cash community seemed appreciative of the Btc.top executive’s statements, with one person saying they found his words to be “an extremely rational, informed, and unbiased dissection of the issues.” “Jiang’s full-length post (in Chinese) is worth reading, glad it’s been partly translated even with some errors,” another BCH supporter wrote.

The full transcript of Jiang Zhuoer’s post can be read here and you can also watch the debate between Zhuoer and Wright here using the Bitkan application.

What do you think about Btc.top CEO Jiang Zhuoer’s statements about the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network? How do you feel about his opinions concerning other chains like BTC and BSV? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Btc.top, Jiang Zhuoer, Twitter, Bitkan, and Pixabay.

Are you a developer looking to build on Bitcoin Cash? Head over to our Bitcoin Developer page where you can get Bitcoin Cash developer guides and start using the Bitbox, SLP, and Badger Wallet SDKs.

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New SLP Token Allows You to Transact in BTC But With BCH Fees

14/06/2019 by Idelto Editor

New SLP Token Allows People to Transact With BTC, but With Bitcoin Cash Fees

There’s a new Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) based token called BTC2 that’s backed 1:1 with BTC. People can obtain the BTC2 token using cryptocurrency swapping application Sideshift.ai. With BTC2, you can essentially transact with BTC, but utilize the same network fee (less than a penny) as bitcoin cash transactions.

Also read: Meet the Developer Who Added Schnorr Signatures to Bcash

Introducing BTC2: Where Store of Value meets Medium of Exchange

In January, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the launch of Sideshift.ai, an application that allows users to swap cryptocurrencies between chains. Sideshift AI was created by Andreas Brekken, the CEO of review site Shitcoin.com, and the notorious individual who once held $220,000 worth of BTC on the Lightning Network. Since then, Sideshift AI has improved a great deal and features a wide variety of crypto assets to trade. One asset recently introduced is an SLP-based token called BTC2. The BTC2 token (not to be confused with the BTC fork of the same name) is basically an SLP token built on Bitcoin Cash that’s backed 1:1 with BTC. Sideshift AI is the custodian of the collateralized BTC and Brekken told news.Bitcoin.com that Sideshift.ai is to BTC2 what the firm Tether is to USDT.

If someone wants to purchase BTC2 they need to use Sideshift AI and exchange their BTC for the token. The price of BTC2, of course, fluctuates with the price of BTC and Sideshift AI will redeem BTC2 for BTC at any time. The new token also has a website called Corecash.org which has a slogan that says “Core Cash: Where Store-of-Value meets Medium-of-Exchange.” Core Cash (BTC2) lets you store and transact BTC on the Bitcoin Cash network, the website explains. This proposition gives BTC2 some value as it provides individuals with the means to transact with BTC for less than a penny per transaction.

Sideshift AI Is to BTC2 What Tether Is to USDT

Sideshift AI has released a document that describes how BTC2 shares similarities with USDT. The Omni Layer-issued token USDT is an IOU for USD where Tether holds the actual USD in their bank. “Sideshift AI is the custodian of the on-chain BTC and issues the BTC2 token in return,” the documentation notes. Speaking with news.Bitcoin.com, Brekken said he was excited to launch the core cash token.

“The overwhelming interest in USDT showed us that users would like to use cryptocurrency without being subject to its volatility,” Brekken remarked. “With BTC2, anyone with a Bitcoin Cash SLP wallet can have the security of the most heavily mined blockchain, Bitcoin (BTC), while still being able to transact cheaply with the low fees of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.” The Sideshift developer added:

While having Sideshift AI as the custodian of one’s BTC adds a counterparty, BTC2 can also open new doors such as earning interest on BTC2. Once Cashshuffle supports SLP tokens, BTC2 holders will be able to store and transact BTC2 with greater privacy than what on-chain BTC offers today.

The release of BTC2 follows the first USD stablecoin issued on the BCH chain called honestcoin (USDH). The new USDH coin was listed on the cryptocurrency exchange Coinex and is backed by USD on a 1:1 ratio. With BTC2, users will get the same effect but with bitcoin core in a similar fashion to the ERC20 token called wrapped bitcoin (WBTC). But being an SLP token, users can store BTC2 on SLP compatible wallets like Crescent Cash, Badger Wallet, Ifwallet, and Electron Cash. The BTC2 token can also be viewed on the Simpleledger.info transaction explorer. At the time of publication, there are 100 BTC2 tokens in circulation and Brekken has told us that minting will take place when more liquidity is needed.

“Sideshift AI is excited to see Coinex launch its USDH token on Bitcoin Cash and is rushing to list USDH,” Brekken added.

What do you think about the BTC2 token built on top of the Bitcoin Cash network using SLP? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Jamie Redman, Twitter, Sideshift AI, Andreas Brekken, and Simpleledger.info.

The post New SLP Token Allows You to Transact in BTC But With BCH Fees appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Mempool ‘Spam’ and Rising Fees: The Consequences of Veriblock’s Mainnet Launch

29/03/2019 by Idelto Editor

Last month the Veriblock testnet represented more than 30 percent of BTC’s network transactions but the project took a hiatus before launching the protocol’s mainnet. When the project stopped, the BTC network’s mempool dropped, transactions per day were cut in half, and fees slightly dipped. However, since the mainnet launch of the Veriblock blockchain, the mempool is once again getting ‘spammed’ and average transaction fees have increased over the last few days.

Also read: Indian Supreme Court Set to Hear Crypto Case on March 29

Veriblock’s Mainnet Captures 18% of BTC Transactions

The Veriblock blockchain launched its mainnet on March 25, and since then the project has been using a lot of BTC transactions again. News.Bitcoin.com reported on the Veriblock testnet back in February when the blockchain platform was piggybacking off the chain and utilized more than 30-45 percent of transactions on a daily basis. Often times last month, BTC transactions per day numbered 285,000-350,000 when Veriblock was testing.

Then, at the beginning of March, Veriblock stopped its testnet and BTC transactions (txn) slipped to 212,000 txn on March 9. After the latest Veriblock launch, the project is now capturing 18.6 percent of BTC transactions at the time of writing and BTC hit a weekly high of 393,000 txn on March 27. Moreover, because of all of these transactions, BTC’s average fee jumped from $0.34 to $0.49 per txn and the mempool (transaction queue) has spiked considerably.

The Veriblock chain is a project that aims to “help secure blockchain networks against 51% attacks so they can thrive.” The project uses a system called proof-of-proof (PoP) and the ‘proof’ is tied to the OP_Return transactions used within the BTC network. Essentially Veriblock can create a snapshot of any chain state and secure it with BTC in a transparent and permissionless fashion. When the mainnet launched, the Veriblock team explained that it is committed to helping other blockchains fend off malicious attacks.

The team mentioned the 51 percent attacks and deep reorgs that happened to Bitcoin Gold, Zencash, Ravencoin, FLO, Vertcoin, and Ethereum Classic as recent examples. Veriblock says that cryptocurrency development teams can now concentrate on programming new features, instead of stressing about attacks. “The marketplace has validated this approach, with over 6,000,000 security transactions on Bitcoin to date,” Veriblock claims.

Some Take Issue With Using BTC for Storing Arbitrary Data and Have Criticized ‘Unneeded’ Purchases

Last time Veriblock used a very noticeable amount of BTC transactions, many hardcore maximalists didn’t like the use of the opcodes and accused the project of “spamming” the network. Developer Jameson Lopp called the project “inefficient” at the time and others called it “garbage.” With the recent Veriblock mainnet launch, spectators are noticing the “fee pressure rises” and others have started getting salty again. There are others that see the fees as positive because they could kickstart Segwit adoption and force people into using the unfinished Lightning Network. For instance, one observer tweeted:

Seems like Lightning channel opens and Veriblock PoPs will make up the majority of transactions soon — This could force exchanges to look into adopting Lightning sooner rather than later.

Op_Return transactions have been very popular throughout the community lately and other blockchains like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) have been using them widely as well with concepts like token creation and platforms like Bitcoinfiles.com and Memo.cash. In fact, OP_Return transactions have been popular throughout the Bitcoin economy since 2013, when people became fascinated with tethering bits of data into transactions to benefit from the blockchain’s immutability. However, some people have taken issue with people using BTC for arbitrary data and have called these transactions whimsical and unneeded spam. With the fees rising and BTC’s transaction congestion in 2017, it caused people to reveal their subjective valuations on what they think people should spend BTC on — to the point where a coffee purchase with bitcoin is considered infeasible.

Supporters of the BCH network believe that a focus on improving onchain scaling is a far better method than forcing people to pay high network fees and onboarding people onto an unfinished and insecure network. There are not many BCH proponents who take issue with people paying for transactions in a permissionless manner, even if it’s aimless and arbitrary information. Moreover, the BCH network has proved it can handle a significant surge of onchain transactions when it processed more than 2 million transactions in 24 hours on Sept. 1, 2018. In fact, the chain continued to process record-breaking daily txns per day that entire week and miner fees declined instead of doubling. It’s hard to say whether or not BTC’s increasing network fees and Veriblock paying for a large portion of transactions will push people toward the Lightning Network or towards other chains as it has done in the past.

What do you think about the Veriblock chain buying a lot of BTC transactions in order to operate its proof-of-proof (PoP) consensus? What do you think about the rising BTC network fees associated with this issue? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Blockchain.com, Grafana OP_Return statistics, Veriblock, and Bitinfocharts.com.

Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section.

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