Why is Bitcoin the predominant one among forks?

[victorfrankl]

Why is Bitcoin the predominant one among different forks, such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X?
Is it because Bitcoin is the most original one? Does it have to do with its price? Or does it have to do with its broad, generic name? Or because it's more widely adopted by many companies? In other words, is there some sort of complicated blockchain technology that will always make the Bitcoin most predominant one among different forks regardless of any circumstances? Is it theoretically possible for forks like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X to be more predominant than Bitcoin in the future? I don't know much about blockchain technology and I wonder if it's ever related to the fact that Bitcoin's the most predominant one.

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[odolvlobo]

I think the major reasons are network effect, brand, and first mover advantage. I feel that it is possible that Bitcoin could drop to #2, though I don't see that happening soon.

[HeRetiK]

It is also worth noting that the forks are maintained by different dev teams than what I would call the canonical Bitcoin. Despite the occasional drama the Bitcoin Core devs have built up a lot of trust over the years. Like other alt projects entering the market, fork teams still need to prove themselves.


About the forks you explicitely mentioned:

Bitcoin Cash has relatively large community support and marketing behind it, which is also why it's currently the Bitcoin hardfork with the largest market cap. Bitcoin Cash is the result of a long debate between scaling Bitcoin on-chain by using bigger blocks and scaling Bitcoin off-chain by introducing additional protocol layers. In the end most people opted for the latter, which is why Bitcoin Cash ended up as the minority fork.

Bitcoin Gold came pretty much out of nowhere, botched their release by getting people infected with malware resulting in stolen coins, and overall seemed more like a cash grab than anything. Hence there's little love for this fork right now.

SegWit2x was a fork that many companies wanted to see succeed, but ultimately failed to gain traction within the wider community. In part likely due to Bitcoin Cash already serving big-block-proponents. In the end SegWit2x failed to convince people, but also failed to fork, due to a bug in their codebase, which effectively caused SegWit2x to lock up. SegWit2x is for all intents and purposes, dead.

After that it became pretty much a fad to hardfork Bitcoin. And with literally dozens of Bitcoin hardforks flooding the market [1], it's honestly hard to give a shit anymore.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2597083.0

[vit05]

I believe the real question is: Is there any reason for these forks to be number one?
My answer would be: No.

They do not have anything new or advantage for the current market. These are attempts to solve real problems, but they are not strong in the long run.
BCash is a project heavily funded by people who have accumulated a lot of BTC. Did not present the solution with the cost of the fee in the long term.
BGold is a lousy project that will soon die. And this other nobody knows.

[Tankdestroyer]

I believe the real question is: Is there any reason for these forks to be number one?

I don't see any problem with any of them being number one if they are really better than bitcoin(that will also apply on the forks to come) but I don't see any reason why those forks are better than bitcoin and in my point of view, they are just copycats.

I think the major reasons are ~snip~ and first mover advantage.

I don't see any reason why bitcoin being the pioneer of crypto as a major reason for keeping its market dominance. It is just that bitcoin is still better to use in paying and receiving money despite the fees, that's all.

[Lucius]

Why is Bitcoin the predominant one among different forks, such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X?
Is it because Bitcoin is the most original one? Does it have to do with its price? Or does it have to do with its broad, generic name? Or because it's more widely adopted by many companies? In other words, is there some sort of complicated blockchain technology that will always make the Bitcoin most predominant one among different forks regardless of any circumstances? Is it theoretically possible for forks like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X to be more predominant than Bitcoin in the future? I don't know much about blockchain technology and I wonder if it's ever related to the fact that Bitcoin's the most predominant one.

I think the reason is very simple, BTC is best known and most popular coin in crypto world - so if someone want to make clone/fork it is logical to copy BTC and use name "Bitcoin" to promote new coin. Such promotion mostly brings new users who are not aware of the differences between real and fork coin, but that for those behind the project is not important at all - profit is the only thing that matters.

I am not sure that some forked coin can replace BTC in future, although it is theoretically possible. The fact is that BTC is on the scene for 9 years, has the highest reputation and independent team who is working on further development. I think time is one of the key factors for success, most of the altcoins just want success overnight, but in most cases it fails.

[mindphuq]

I don't see any reason why bitcoin being the pioneer of crypto as a major reason for keeping its market dominance. It is just that bitcoin is still better to use in paying and receiving money despite the fees, that's all.

Well, Bitcoin is the most accepted, everyone that accepts crypto payments also accepts bitcoin. Some also accept Ethereum, Litecoin or even Doge but everyone accepts Bitcoin.

[Carlton Banks]

SegWit2x was a fork that many companies wanted to see succeed, but ultimately failed to gain traction within the wider community. In part likely due to Bitcoin Cash already serving big-block-proponents. In the end SegWit2x failed to convince people, but also failed to fork, due to a bug in their codebase, which effectively caused SegWit2x to lock up.

Bitcoin Cash didn't exactly succeed in hard forking either


Bitcoin Cash did a 2nd hard fork very quickly after the split from Bitcoin, as there was not enough mining capacity to produce more than a few blocks per day. This obviously undermined the "faster than Bitcoin" marketing that Bcash still employs (and demonstrates how little planning went into the first hardfork). This wasn't the end of the episode; the Emergency Difficulty Adjustment logic introduced as the 2nd Bitcoin Cash hardfork was later abandoned by a 3rd hardfork (which reinstated Bitcoin's diffculty adjustment logic) once Bitcoin Cash's difficulty was matched with it's small hashrate.

Even after that, Bitcoin Cash's original hardfork didn't function correctly. I used version 16 of the Bitcoin Cash client to dump all my BCH last winter. When it was caught up to block 478548 (the 1st hardforked Bitcoin Cash block on August 1st 2017), the software refused to follow it's own fork! (the debug log suggested that the Bitcoin Cash software considered the Bitcoin Cash blockchain to be invalid)


So, over 3 months after their original hard fork, Bitcoin Cash failed at least twice to correctly perform their 1st hard fork. They needed 2 additional hardforks to correct the problems of the 1st, and it still didn't work after fork number 3. Does anyone know whether their recent 4th hardfork (or was it the 5th?) actually worked? Has anyone dared to mine a 32 MB block yet? Or even a 1MB block!

[audaciousbeing]

I think the major reasons are network effect, brand, and first mover advantage. I feel that it is possible that Bitcoin could drop to #2, though I don't see that happening soon.

In addition to to what others have said, I think the reason why bitcoin was popular is because all of the developers of this forks actually worked for bitcoin for the past years and this is what they built for all those years before they started pursuing other endeavors when their loyalties shifted. There is no way different parts would be stronger than the whole especially when the whole has been in existence in a long while. To buttress this, is to look at the situation of the origin of the church that broke away from Catholic and till today, no church is as popular, richer or influence decision that the Catholic church.

[osasshem]

For me, I'll say that as bitcoin is the first  of its kind, it is useling its dominant power to subdue others, and bitcoin itself has lots of backers that bitcoincash, bitcoin gold, bitcoin segwit2x does not have. Bitcoin's influence in the crypto market is so high and trusted that it affects all other currencies.

[goddog]

Bitcoin is not only the first, it is the best.
Bitcoincash told me: I should not run a full node, I should not verify, I should only run an spv client, I should trust miners beacuse they are fair.
Bitcoingold told me that gpu mining is better.
Segwit2x was a no sensense. blocksize was already increased with segwit.

I hope bitcoin means verify is better than trust, also I don't like the idea of a blockchain used as database, Ethereum already showed me that I'm not able to synchronize a full node if blocksize is not limited, my hdd is not free, my ram is not free, my cpu time is not free, so bitcoincash was not an option.

I hope ASIC mining is better than GPU mining because sha256 asics is a simple algorithm, so more manufacturer can join with lower entry barrier. Actually I hope there are only 2 GPU manufacturer vs at least 4 or 5 sha256 manufacturer startups, so sha256 asics are more decentralized than gpu. Also a gpu can be reused fo others purpose making a 51% attack cheaper to be performed. so bitcoingold was not an option.

I hope that hardforks will split consensus so it should be avoided until there is no emergency, and segwit2x was a solution to nothing, too little to be able to reduce fees, blocksize was already increased with segwit. Most bitcoins users was not understanding that blockspace is a pubblic resource that need to be used carefully. Fighting against another blocksize increase was a way to tell users to optimize their code. Exchanges started batching transactions, users stopped to abuse the blockchain as a database and mempool was emptied.

Altcoins in general have no real value, they are insecure, and reduce trust in blockchain and bitcoin technology. Implementing new features as 2way pegged sidechain would be better, but altcoin developers and users are only looking for a way to be rich fast, so marketing and fud give altcoin some fuel.

[HeRetiK]

SegWit2x was a fork that many companies wanted to see succeed, but ultimately failed to gain traction within the wider community. In part likely due to Bitcoin Cash already serving big-block-proponents. In the end SegWit2x failed to convince people, but also failed to fork, due to a bug in their codebase, which effectively caused SegWit2x to lock up.

Bitcoin Cash didn't exactly succeed in hard forking either

[...]

lol... yeah, I suppressed most of those memories. Especially the EDA mess was quite fun to watch. Annoying, when you actually wanted to send coins on either chain, but fun to watch.

Also, how they threw in full 2-way replay protection at the last minute. Jesus. Let's just throw in significant changes to our transaction format 2 days (iirc) before the fork. What could possibly go wrong.


So yeah, trusting ain't easy.

[Theb]

To add on what others have said, I think that users are also thinking about the acceptability of the coin. If they always change the main currency they are using/accepting to every fork coins being created then the general public will have a hard time on adapting to one main coin this will also result into a lot of confusion. So far it is pretty evident that the most widely accepted cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, you won't see a lot of establisments and businesses accepting Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin Gold as it will just confuse the public more. Fork coins have more use being traded in the market rather than function as a currency itself.

[dirham99]

Why is Bitcoin the predominant one among different forks, such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X?
Is it because Bitcoin is the most original one? Does it have to do with its price? Or does it have to do with its broad, generic name? Or because it's more widely adopted by many companies? In other words, is there some sort of complicated blockchain technology that will always make the Bitcoin most predominant one among different forks regardless of any circumstances? Is it theoretically possible for forks like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X to be more predominant than Bitcoin in the future? I don't know much about blockchain technology and I wonder if it's ever related to the fact that Bitcoin's the most predominant one.

By seeing the condition, I think the reason is so simple, BTC is the best known and most popular coin in the crypto world - so if someone wants to make a logical clone / fork to copy BTC and use the name "Bitcoin" to promote new coins. . that's my opinion. Such promotions mostly bring in new users who are unaware of the difference between real coins and forks, but for them behind the project it is not important at all - profit is the only thing that matters

[TheHas]

The value of incumbency in cryptocurrency is massive.

Bitcoin is not, at a technical level, any better than most of the other blockchains/coins out there. In fact, depending on what you use it for, it is demonstrably worse (hence forks or brand new altcoins focused on privacy or whatever).

But because Bitcoin is the OG, every other coin is traded relative to Bitcoin and discussed relative to Bitcoin (in satoshis).

So being the first mover has huge advantages and I think Bitcoin will continue to dominate, specifically as a 'reserve' currency of crypto.

[Naida_BR]

Bitcoin is and will be the dominant crypto simply because it was the first one.

See for example all the pairings happen with Bitcoin in any exchanges. An increase in the volume of transactions the value of the crypto increases as well like a domino effect.

[officialswordcoin]

Why is Bitcoin the predominant one among different forks, such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X?
Is it because Bitcoin is the most original one? Does it have to do with its price? Or does it have to do with its broad, generic name? Or because it's more widely adopted by many companies? In other words, is there some sort of complicated blockchain technology that will always make the Bitcoin most predominant one among different forks regardless of any circumstances? Is it theoretically possible for forks like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X to be more predominant than Bitcoin in the future? I don't know much about blockchain technology and I wonder if it's ever related to the fact that Bitcoin's the most predominant one.

Its mainly because of game initiator and the kind of branding and marketing they have indulged in their ecosystem has helped them a lot. And yes there could be the day when someone replaces them from the No. 1 spot but they will always be the first name which

[Macinto$h]

I think the major reasons are network effect, brand, and first mover advantage. I feel that it is possible that Bitcoin could drop to #2, though I don't see that happening soon.

I think that this is a very real scenario, however, for this there must be a number of circumstances. For example, I think that if the Ethereum can implement the Casper protocol within the next few months and increase the number of transactions per second to 1 million, this can be such a factor.

[Carlton Banks]

Bitcoin is not, at a technical level, any better than most of the other blockchains/coins out there. In fact, depending on what you use it for, it is demonstrably worse (hence forks or brand new altcoins focused on privacy or whatever).

This is not true. Bitcoin might not have the same contract programming flexibility as Ethereum, but that is widely considered to be flaw in Ethereum's design methodology (the most prevalent opinion among developers is that more complex contracts should be implemented as additional network layers to Bitcoin, and/or as separate sidechains). Transaction privacy is much the same, better as a separate protocol layer (and the practialities of Ethereum and Monero prove why; both have very fast growing blockchains, which is a decentralisation compromise).

Additionally, Bitcoin source code is constantly borrowed by the (much smaller) developer teams working on other cryptocurrencies even after the new coin is launched (this is sometimes referenced directly on the webpages of pull requests in the Bitcoin git repository). A large number (~20 regulars, plus many many more occasional contributors) work on Bitcoin, whereas most other coins have maybe 3-5 developers at the max. The development focus is on Bitcoin, and maybe that does have an element of 1st mover advantage to it, but that can only be maintained if the development is of a consistent high quality (and there's been nearly 10 years of this kind of impetus with Bitcoin development, no other coin matches that). A large number of talented programmers work on Bitcoin, and that's what makes the Bitcoin network function so well and attract users, not incumbency.

[TheHas]

Bitcoin is not, at a technical level, any better than most of the other blockchains/coins out there. In fact, depending on what you use it for, it is demonstrably worse (hence forks or brand new altcoins focused on privacy or whatever).

This is not true. Bitcoin might not have the same contract programming flexibility as Ethereum, but that is widely considered to be flaw in Ethereum's design methodology (the most prevalent opinion among developers is that more complex contracts should be implemented as additional network layers to Bitcoin, and/or as separate sidechains). Transaction privacy is much the same, better as a separate protocol layer (and the practialities of Ethereum and Monero prove why; both have very fast growing blockchains, which is a decentralisation compromise).

Additionally, Bitcoin source code is constantly borrowed by the (much smaller) developer teams working on other cryptocurrencies even after the new coin is launched (this is sometimes referenced directly on the webpages of pull requests in the Bitcoin git repository). A large number (~20 regulars, plus many many more occasional contributors) work on Bitcoin, whereas most other coins have maybe 3-5 developers at the max. The development focus is on Bitcoin, and maybe that does have an element of 1st mover advantage to it, but that can only be maintained if the development is of a consistent high quality (and there's been nearly 10 years of this kind of impetus with Bitcoin development, no other coin matches that). A large number of talented programmers work on Bitcoin, and that's what makes the Bitcoin network function so well and attract users, not incumbency.

Interesting. Particularly the point you make about around contract programming flexibility of Ethereum being considered a flaw by many isn't something I was aware of. You generally hear the 'smart' contract functions of Ethereum framed as a positive, especially with all the erc20 tokens. Perhaps this is a case of ease-of-use in creating an erc20 token taking priority over the possible 'better' but longer approach of creating side chains or additional network layers to Bitcoin.

Yeah ten years of bitcoin development is about nine years longer than most altcoins out there, so not surprising the source code is borrowed so heavily from other smaller projects.