November 2020
Beginner to intermediate
281 pages
7h 28m
English
Content preview from Mastering Blockchain
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Chapter 4. The Evolution to Ethereum
In its early days, Bitcoin was considered an all-encompassing technological marvel. Over time, however, developers began to realize that blockchain technology could support additional features. This led to the introduction of new concepts built on top of Bitcoin, and then an entirely new blockchain known as Ethereum.
Improving Bitcoin’s Limited Functionality
Bitcoin was the first decentralized consensus protocol to apply the concept of scripted money—that is, the idea that cryptocurrency transactions could transmit funds depending on the true/false status of running a limited program. Initially, many saw bitcoin as “programmable money,” but scripted money is a better analogy due to its limited functionality. Similarly, in the early days bitcoin was typically viewed as a currency, but along the way it began to be looked at as more of a store of value and sparked many debates on the difference between the two.
The evolution of Bitcoin led an influential and ardent group of followers in the developer community to advocate for a cautious and limited approach to protocol changes, for security and safety reasons. Protocol changes like block size increases were viewed with skepticism. These advocates wanted to maintain the core goals of remaining decentralized and being inclusive, to the extent that anyone could run a full node on cheap hardware with a low-throughput internet connection.
As we touched on in the previous chapter, however, some Bitcoin ...
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