Network effect doesn't explain Bitcoin dominance : technical arguments for Bitcoin Maximalism

I often saw some Bitcoiners counter the altcoin shillers with the following argument: "Bitcoin is the first so it has the network effect, so your altcoin will always worth less"

This is not totally wrong but I think this argument is bad. Using it implies implicitly that you admit that Bitcoin is technically less capable than altcoins with their higher transaction rate, fast blocks, instant confirmation, without fees and smart contract support....

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And this is WRONG ! Bitcoin price is higher, because Bitcoin is already TECHNICALLY BETTER than any other altcoin and not because of network effect. In 2017, Bitcoin dominance was lower, some altcoin reaches almost the same level than Bitcoin. So network effect is not what prevents an altcoin to take the lead but it is the fact that almost all altcoin that pretend to be better than Bitcoin are technically flawed.

Why ? They use bigger blocks, DAGs (Directed Acyclic Graphs, like used in IOTA or Nano) or wtf they created to disturbe you and make you believe they are better than the good old Bitcoin blockchain. But they have at least one of these two weak points: validation time or/and bandwidth.

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If they use bigger/faster blocks, validation time of block is higher and so block propagation is slower. Less nodes can operate as they may not be able to validate blocks fast enough to keep up with the tip of the chain. You end up like Ethereum that has less and less full verification nodes leading to centralization of the network.

If they use DAGs, they achieve consensus through a "proof-of-stake" vote and always at the cost of bandwidth (quadratic cost in number of node, linear in transaction rate). DAGs are often presented as "each node has its own ledger" but the reality is that the only global ledger you should trust is the complete DAG of the ledgers of each node. Only servers with a shitload of download bandwidth can maintain it as debunked here and here. To not look (in fact be) centralized, some DAG altcoins doesn't, opening the door to history rewrite by buying account that owned a big stake before and still use a lot of bandwidth to reach consensus. Bitcoin just add 80 bytes of proof-of-work data on a block of 1-2MB to achieve it and protect from history rewrite, almost zero cost for the network (that's why we pay fees to miners who carry the cost).

You only have those problems when it reaches a critical level of usage and only then we can see how much those limits where ignored. Until now, very few altcoins reached the limit (maybe Ethereum, and IOTA shows us it is centralized already by stopping the network)

Bitcoin has the highest price because Bitcoin is technically the only possible decentralized king (and a centralized cryptocurrency worths nothing). Yes maybe 1MB limit was too conservativ, yes fees are higher, yes 10 minutes is slow. But if everyone wants their coffee payment to be settled onchain, 1MB or 8MB or 32MB each 10 minutes, minutes or secondes will never be enough while it is a big difference for the network health. You only need the blockchain for settlement, for payment you have Lightning Network that can already destroy PayPal's transaction rate.

So next time you feel convinced by an altcoin that pretend to be better than Bitcoin while being decentralized by design, evaluate the requirement to be a fully validating node and what the overhead of bandwidth needed to achieve consensus. The chances are high that they didn't take care of one of these two issues and end up centralized or broken. You don't need the network effect argument.

Submitted April 26, 2020 at 05:43AM by Pantamis https://ift.tt/357UByg