Bitcoin Forum

I'm not convinced that Lightning Network nodes/banks will be easy to setup because of technical and financial barriers. On the other hand the recent events show that bitcoin transaction limit has reached a roadblock.

I propose to split bitcoin in two blockchains just like the BCH split few month ago: BTC1 and BTC2. Users get coins on both chains and choose which one to use. Businesses and miners get more block space and can accept and mine both chains, all while running only one bitcoind process. Users can validate their chain in real time. Price discovery between chains is done on decentralized and centralized exchanges or on atomic swap exchange built in transaction protocol. Value is safely transferred between chains using atomic swaps. When network conditions improve block size can be raised to 2MB or more. If bitcoin network becomes congested again then another chain is split from the last one (or some kind of lottery is employed) and so on.

It sounds to me like you're describing the benefits of sidechains. With sidechains you can have multiple blockchains but without needing to create new "currencies" for each one.

From user's point of view everything outside his chain is a black box. Market price discovery is needed to take into account everyday developments.

OP, what is the difference between your idea and having atomic swaps enabled on Bitcoin and some other coin like Decred or Litecoin? There is no need to complicate the network, and I believe that proposal will he trashed by Core the minute they read it.

This proposal doesn't complicate network but instead simplifies and standardize it. Until a healthy scaling solution is enabled all kinds of useless coins like LTC and BCH will keep taking market share away from BTC. And by the way, beloved by some Lightning Network may equally well run on BTC1+BTC2.

It doesn't make sense to call LTC and BCH useless when they are Bitcoin forks (LTC is a code fork of Bitcoin as far as I know), while you are proposing creating a coin that is literally the same as Bitcoin. Having different coins used with Atomic swaps would decentralize the network even more and make it safer. There is no need for two Bitcoins when we can have Bitcoin and altcoins.

We can't have Bitcoin in its current state, just look at https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ . And I'm not sure Lightning Network will work as intended, even less so with 1MB blocks.

I'm sure this idea has probably already been brought up and shot down so please forgive my noob idea.  Would it be possible archive the blockchain every few years? By this I mean take a snap shot of all wallet balances removing the transaction history and greatly compressing the data, this would become the starting point of transaction verification for the next few years and the archive (which would contain the full transaction history over the past few years) could be distributed by archive nodes.  The archive nodes would not be necessary to validate new transactions so someone could run a "full" node without the archive. You wouldn't need as many archive nodes as full nodes and even if the archives become several TB in size there would still be people willing to provide the storage necessary to secure bitcoin.

 The Lightning Network nodes and the forks are the only possible solution for the problem i can see .
One can split the upcoming bitcoin among block chains but what about the already existing  ones ? Is there a possible way to get away from the high fees .
That would just be a temporary solution , ultimately the side chains will out grow too .                   

I will still take the side of the Lightning Network because it can be a great options for Bitcoin users. It is much more safe and is really worthy to have its place. The idea of rapid payments is very new but very exciting. The low fees can give Bitcoin its place again as the leader and the king of crypto. Even, the small transactions would be possible then. The Lightning Network can make Bitcoin more secure and the investors will get more profits.
Spiriting Bitcoins isn't a good thing at all because that can impact the reputation of it drastically. Think about it when there be Bitcoin 1 and Bitcoin 2, then that could cause much disturbance and confusion for the users of Bitcoin. Many new investors and users of it might get confused and scared.

I agree that this proposal is complex but Lightning Network isn't simple as well. Also bitcoin still stays a peer-to-peer electronic cash system whereas Lightning Network brings the middleman in the equation.

No one is sure about anything, but there is no reason to assume it won't. Besides, blocks are practically supposed to be 4 MB now as segwit is activated.


There is decreased security in this that is unescapable. The only way to be sure that this is original blockchain is by having the entire history. A new node can not really know if this checkpoint is valid or not, not without the full blockchain. As for the verification part, there are already checkpoints in Bitcoin Core that are hardcoded and the client assumes valid, as far as I understand. And there are also options to remove the old blocks and just keep what you need, this is called a pruned node.


It is not that complex if you read about it. You can see the 3 part article describing it here to some extent https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-building-a-bidirectional-payment-channel-1464710791/ (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-building-a-bidirectional-payment-channel-1464710791/) ,
It is a common misconception that LN is introducing middlemen. This would be very simple and nothing special at all if it was the case. Using online wallets you can already do this. Instead LN is a pretty smart way of doing this in a safe,trustless and decentralized manner. It is not perfect of course, but it is an amazing optional improvement.

Wow.  Interesting thought.  A fork that is an exact clone of bitcoin....I think you are seriously on to something!

Go do it!  Make it happen!  Call it Bitcoin2 BC2 or BT2 or BTC2.  It will start a chain reaction just watch!

Yes core will be scared because this makes too much sense!  They will loose control!

The problem with that is all inactive wallets would basically loose their coins since you can't verify back that they owned the coins way back when if they haven't been moved recently.  And blockchain data cannot (or virtually cannot) be compressed.

My vote is make bitcoin2 segwit free  ;D

In my opinion, the upcoming BTC split does not seem to have much impact on the market. BCC and BTG, BCC have been gaining much attention from investors over the years. BTG has not had strong growth,

Then what will be alternate solution if we excluding the Fork or splitting the blockchain as a different child of bitcoin.
Lightning network may bring secure and trust then it can be good one to implement if we more concerned about high fee.
If it gives more profit and positive trust to the investors and why don't we have LN. If the BTC names splitting will create confusion and will not feel its a original. Permanent solution is what we expecting.

I've never considered before cloning bitcoin, but I have thought about clone coins before.  It's just the only way to scale.  Currently the speed of the internet is simply not fast enough for one coin to meet the transaction needs of the world.  In my decentralized currency model the currency I would release would have a 12kb max block size and 7 minute blocktime.  Making the blocks any larger or the blocktime any shorter takes the fair distribution away from the coin.  My solution to this?  Lots of clones.  The coins become less fungible but that is just the fact of life.  A blockchain is miles in progress in fungibility verses other methods like digital collectibles and digital commodities and digital assets like I describe in this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2581014.0