If you could design Bitcoin from scratch today...

[thecodebear]

If you could design Bitcoin from scratch today, how would you design it? What changes would you make?

Obviously Bitcoin is anchored into previous decisions by the effort to keep it immutably perfect hard money. So keeping that in mind, designing it to be immutable from today forward, building it from scratch today, what design changes would you make today?

[dzungmobile]

Change its block reward and halvings to avoid that after first 4 years and first halving, 50% of Bitcoin in total supply can be mined.

It excludes big advantage for early miners and give late comers fairer chances.

Anyway, there is no time machine and Bitcoin blockchain is irreversible.

Irreversibility makes high value for Bitcoin.

[mk4]

Knowing how big bitcoin is today, its denomination. I'd prefer if the sats denominator is what we call "bitcoin" today(moving 8 decimal places), so bitcoin wouldn't be priced so high unit-wise as it's not so currency-like.

[Kakmakr]

Well, I would have wanted SegWit to be part of the original protocol, so that we did not have all the fighting over a congested Blockchain and also some more focus on Smart contracts.

I think Ethereum wiggled it self into the Bitcoin space, because it looked for a weakness in the Bitcoin uses and it redesigned it's use case to fill those gaps. We should have been prepared for that, with better code and also effortless solutions to cover those use cases. 

[Hydrogen]

If you could design Bitcoin from scratch today, how would you design it? What changes would you make?

Store the operational on disc BTC blockchain in a compressed format to reduce its size by roughly 1/3rd. Essentially what .zip, .tar and .7z file formats do. Not 100% certain what the unzipping process would look like. Or what effect it might have on transaction overhead. Unzip on the fly is a possibility. It would make the download and storage process more feasible for entry level with lower capacity HDD.

Blockchain culling.  After a certain period of time, old redundant transactions would be archived and removed from the active blockchain to keep its size relatively manageable. As there are no chargebacks, there is no reason to list every transaction on chain.

Uptime statistics for energy demographics.  How many total transactions were powered by renewable energy, with basic breakdowns of who, what, where, when, etc. Total transparency for green power. No studies or research would need to be conducted by the EPA or other organizations. To an extent, energy demographics would be built into the chain and software by default.

Different versions to cater to various roles and functions.  One distribution could be dedicated towards remittances. Another could be dedicated HODL. No more big block versus small block debate. Each role would have a dedicated software intended to fulfill the task.

Etc.

[slaman29]

Just make a nicer GUI and design it for easy phone app use? I know that is not about Bitcoin actual architecture but I guess if the programming language was different it might make it easier for people to use a Bitcoin app that was also a really useful wallet?

Now we have apps yes but they give nothing like the true functionality of Bitcoin.

[davis196]

Making BTC mining less energy hungry? I don't know how that will happen.
Creating a method/protocol, where the users, who lost access to the coins in their wallets could  recover their private keys(access to their wallets). I know that many people would be against such protocol, because lost coins make BTC more scarce, but I think the fear of losing your coins because you forgot your password/private keys is what keeps many noobs away from Bitcoin and this kinda stops the process of mass adoption.
I agree with the idea of renaming the satoshi into Bitcoin. This way one Bitcoin would be worth less than a dollar, rather than 23K USD. This kinda makes Bitcoin look more accessible in the eyes of the noobs.

[Obari]

If you could design Bitcoin from scratch today, how would you design it? What changes would you make?

Obviously Bitcoin is anchored into previous decisions by the effort to keep it immutably perfect hard money. So keeping that in mind, designing it to be immutable from today forward, building it from scratch today, what design changes would you make today?

I never thought of a design but maybe there are features I really would love to see some amendments on for instance is the area with gas fee, gosh I don't know if anyone also complains about the gas fee of Bitcoin because most times I feel very reluctant when having to send out Bitcoin because of its fees and I think since it's pegged to dollar, it is more on other non dollar countries like mine when having to convert the gas fee rate to my local currency and it breaks my heart.
And just as @davis196 said and truly I don't know how possible this could be but it be great having a feature or way of getting to recover once coins just incase there is no access to the seed phrase .

[NotATether]

Most people would not be able to make a redesigned Proof-of-concept Bitcoin clone, even if they happen to be a programmer, because the codebase is really vast and so you'd have to use one of the early versions that are small enough for a single person to successfully tweak.

Blockchain culling.  After a certain period of time, old redundant transactions would be archived and removed from the active blockchain to keep its size relatively manageable. As there are no chargebacks, there is no reason to list every transaction on chain.

What? How is that even possible, without destroying full blockchain verification?

[franky1]

Most people would not be able to make a redesigned Proof-of-concept Bitcoin clone, even if they happen to be a programmer, because the codebase is really vast and so you'd have to use one of the early versions that are small enough for a single person to successfully tweak.

the codebase may seem very vast. but it also has alot of cludgy code in it to seem vast
(usually developers purposefully make it cludgy and hard to read/follow to stop outsiders from  competing/changing things)

there are simpler ways to add checks/rules for certain data types. far simpler then the cludge sipa implemented over the years

even things like checking block rewards.
todays code had the coin= units / 100000000 and then more code to then show a 50btc
and then more code to show a depreciation factor of 50% per 210k block and then counting them out

however simply by saying block reward starts at
binary: 100101010000001011111001000000000    (5000000000sat aka 50btc)
and each halving is
binary: 100101010000001011111001000000000   (2500000000sat aka 25btc)
binary: 100101010000001011111001000000000  (1250000000sat aka 12.5btc)
binary: 100101010000001011111001000000000  (625000000sat aka 6.25btc)
and so on

can be done in code form far far far easier

Blockchain culling.  After a certain period of time, old redundant transactions would be archived and removed from the active blockchain to keep its size relatively manageable. As there are no chargebacks, there is no reason to list every transaction on chain.

What? How is that even possible, without destroying full blockchain verification?

a method can be what has been theorised before as a 'ball and chain'
(ball is a unspent snapshot of a milestoned point dataset. then the normal chain updating from it)

imagine at block 210,000 a snapshot of the utxo is saved and a hash ID is created.
this hash id is put into an op return of coinbase of a block so that its hash is locked into the blockchain as a reference and then after another far later milestone when it shows acceptance and agreement of that snapshot by the masses, by not rejecting blocks containing it
meaning masses agree that their snapshot complies with the same hash as the one in the opreturn reference.. that then becomes the list of unspents from the standing point of block 209999

then instead of storing full blocks of 0-209999 it stores just the unspents of that milestone
then repeat at block 420k and 630k and 840k

as for what id change
all tx formats have rules.. with byte limits to keep tx as lean as possible

where a certain opcode has the anyonecanspend(no limit/format/check) but the opcode is disabled be default UNTIL good clean code is reviewed independantly and scrutinised for validation bugs. and then activating the opcode, which requires nodes to upgrade. then activates the new tx format with all checks and validation rules implace including byte length thats fits it sole purpose

[John Abraham]

Bitcoin is already good enough.  I thought there is nothing to re-design again. But, look at comments, people have more ideas of how it can be improved. Of course I do not have enough knowledge to design or talk about the functionality. But, if I could be a part of the team, I may ask them to keep it minable with GPU's as well.

As we know, at some point, Bitcoin was minable with Graphics cards. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of Bitcoin. I wish I was there and I could mine Bitcoins with my Graphics card. I accumulated some sats with my Gaming PC from Nicehash when ETH POS update.

[NotATether]

Blockchain culling.  After a certain period of time, old redundant transactions would be archived and removed from the active blockchain to keep its size relatively manageable. As there are no chargebacks, there is no reason to list every transaction on chain.

What? How is that even possible, without destroying full blockchain verification?

a method can be what has been theorised before as a 'ball and chain'

imagine at block 210,000 a snapshot of the utxo is saved and a hash ID is created.
this hash id is put into an op return of coinbase of a block so that its hash is locked into the blockchain as a reference and then after another far later milestone when it shows acceptance and agreement of that snapshot by the masses, by not rejecting blocks containing it
meaning masses agree that their snapshot complies with the same hash as the one in the opreturn reference.. that then becomes the list of unspents from the standing point of block 209999

then instead of storing full blocks of 0-209999 it stores just the unspents of that milestone
then repeat at block 420k and 630k and 840k

Sounds like a good idea. But if you have a wallet, you'll lose information about all the transactions you made more than 4 (for example) years ago.

Instead of replacing all full nodes with these "part nodes", I'd suggest that the majority of nodes become part nodes with the culling feature, but there are still about 1000 or so nodes with full blockchain history connected to the network, so that these transactions can still be fetched, albeit more slowly, as they are only expected to be referenced rarely at most.

It is something that can be done now (with another program, without modifying Bitcoin Core) and not an "if only" idea.

[mk4]

Creating a method/protocol, where the users, who lost access to the coins in their wallets could  recover their private keys(access to their wallets). I know that many people would be against such protocol, because lost coins make BTC more scarce, but I think the fear of losing your coins because you forgot your password/private keys is what keeps many noobs away from Bitcoin and this kinda stops the process of mass adoption.

I don't think it's the fact that people don't want it. It's the fact that there's no way of doing this without having a centralized entity requiring AML/KYC. The closest thing we have to this is social backups, like what Argent(ethereum wallet) has.

[franky1]

i prefer full nodes to be full nodes.. where its more of a majority. rather than 'just 1000'

but i was just displaying how what today is termed 'blockchain culling' is able to work. as one quick example(just as a thought experiment not a proposal)

some people have already theorised, desired and implemented methods have fool* nodes but you asked how a culled blockchain could work. so i just responded with just one idea that has been whispered around in the last few years

i personally would prefer full nodes to actually be full nodes. where they have a strong consensus ruleset not a soft ruleset. where all transactions are verified and all tx formats have actual byte limits..

and if people then want to be fool* nodes. then so be it. let them know they are a step down from full node. and its their choice for their personal use to accept the step down.

*fool node. sounds the same as a full node but doesnt do everything. EG it doesnt validate all data or it prunes/culls blocks.. basically its not a full node even though it wants to sound like it is

[joniboini]

I never thought of a design but maybe there are features I really would love to see some amendments on for instance is the area with gas fee, gosh I don't know if anyone also complains about the gas fee of Bitcoin because most times I feel very reluctant when having to send out Bitcoin because of its fees and I think since it's pegged to dollar, it is more on other non dollar countries like mine when having to convert the gas fee rate to my local currency and it breaks my heart.

I don't think fees are pegged to dollars. You pay with sats, and you can manually select the rate of the fee you're choosing to send your transaction. I've never seen a clogged blocks that requires you to pay more than $50 to make $ a transaction. What wallet are you using right now? You might want to switch if it always sends overpaid transactions.

And just as @davis196 said and truly I don't know how possible this could be but it be great having a feature or way of getting to recover once coins just incase there is no access to the seed phrase .

I don't really see how it will work though, as mentioned above. And who can guarantee that somebody else would steal your keys in one way or the other?

[Hydrogen]

What? How is that even possible, without destroying full blockchain verification?

Redundant transactions do not need to be recorded or reverified.

There would be a set of conditions for redundant transactions, which would allow the data to be culled after a period of time had elapsed.

There are no chargebacks or reversals in the transaction system. Which are some of the main reasons for long and detailed transaction chains being important. Once something has been verified for a period of time. It can be considered etched in stone. Which makes the record of it less important, as it will never be amended or revised. The old data can be archived on a separate chain, which would be considerably larger. While the smaller chain would be the one in active use for a leaner and more streamlined architecture.

Crypto miners might also be tasked with the culling process which would function similar to current BTC rewards.

Say there are 1,000 transactions in the chain preceding the current transaction. Do we really need 100% of those 1,000 transactions? Why don't we cull 900 out of 1,000 and keep only the last 100. With the raw data being archived in a big file chain. If this is done on every transaction branch, it might shrink the size of the chain by a factor of 90%. If the current bitcoin blockchain is 250 gigabytes, this might shrink it down to a far more manageable 25 gigabytes.

[franky1]

Creating a method/protocol, where the users, who lost access to the coins in their wallets could  recover their private keys(access to their wallets). I know that many people would be against such protocol, because lost coins make BTC more scarce, but I think the fear of losing your coins because you forgot your password/private keys is what keeps many noobs away from Bitcoin and this kinda stops the process of mass adoption.

I don't think it's the fact that people don't want it. It's the fact that there's no way of doing this without having a centralized entity requiring AML/KYC. The closest thing we have to this is social backups, like what Argent(ethereum wallet) has.

solution to this is simple.
multisig 2 of 3
have 3 keys somewhere at youhave access to but not same location


that way if you lose one. you still have 2 more. (separating locations reduces risks of losing all three at same time)
and when you lose one its then time to move funds to a fresh 2 of 3 to have 3 keys again to avoid the risk of losing a second key if left to long on an already lost key set

chances of losing all three at the exact same time is high if same location stored. so spread them out. give them to friends or relatives knowing they cant do anything with only 1 key they hold.


as for any protocol that can move value without key signatures(your permission/consent). a system that allows that is a system i wont want to use. the chances of abuse becomes rife
(EG fiat account forfeiture)

EG. find an old stash. pretend its yours but you forgot your proof. and boom you win someone elses stash.. um no thanks

[death69]

If we were to design Bitcoin from scratch today, it would be a bomb-ass project! There's so many dope directions we could take it in, but the main focus gotta be on makin it more secure and user-friendly, ya dig? We gotta figure out ways to integrate it with other fly technologies to create a smooth experience for all the users out there. But, at the same time, we gotta be mindful of what could go down if we create a decentralized currency, ya feel me? We gotta think about how it could impact the global economy and all the power dynamics at play. It's gonna be a tricky balance, but if we plan it right and think it throuh, we could create a revolutionary system that'll be off the hook!

[maydna]

Designing bitcoin from scratch required a very high level of skill that not many coders could do. And I also don't know if I can design bitcoin alone from scratch because I'm sure it is very complicated and would not have been possible without high expertise. And given the development of bitcoin the way it is today, I'm not sure what design I need to add for bitcoin because I see bitcoin is pretty well developed right now and just need to see it adopted by more and more people. In addition, I also did not follow the history of bitcoin creation from the beginning.

[cabron]

If I have to restart it, only the total supply to 21 Billion. If the price will be just below $25, its better so that everyone can be onboard. It doesnt have a value of $50k to be recognized.

But I will leave the global crisis still so that people will be aware of BTC that government officials are using it and some official orgs are using BTC.