15 years after the first altchain: Is any altcoin "better" than Bitcoin?

[IShishkin]

A slightly lower block time (like in the case of Litecoin with 2.5 minutes) has slight measurable centralization disadvantages but the advantage of the 10 minute time is almost negligible.

For example, Google's Gemini mentions the following "advantages":
- Selfish mining is possible with 32.9 % of mining power (2.5 minutes) instead of 33.3 % (10 minutes)
- The "wasted network power" due to orphan blocks is 0.13 % (2.5 minutes) instead of 0.03 % (10 minutes), which means the edge for large pools is ~0.1 percentage points and thus very low

Thus I think if Bitcoin was created today, with compact blocks and other modern mechanisms, they could have chosen a slightly lower block time. While of course a single 2.5 minute confirmation is not the same than a 10 minute one, it provides slightly more security than a no-confirmation tx (above all due to RBF).

Gemini's answer depends on the question that you ask it. I guess, those estimates are lower theoretical bounds. The real numbers in a distributed network are often higher than that. Furthermore, bitcoins forks often have lower activity level. There are less nodes and less transactions. Blocks are not full. Measured numbers of "wasted network power" might be much smaller on them. Also there are different methods to propagate blocks with different trade-offs. We can only speculate about theoretical "what if" scenarios. Gemini is the great tool but it is only as good as question that you ask it.

[Munshi Prem Chand]

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​I m pretty sure this risk isnt zero, as in February of 2017 the Monero Research Lab discovered a critical vulnerability in CryptoNotes base protocol that allowed a user to mint unlimited coins that couldnt be detected as counterfeit, verified that the blockchain was not taken advantage of in this way, and fixed the vulnerability in a stealth update (spreading a bogus rumor that they had found DoS vector so that the other CN coins could patch before word got out on why update actually happened) (official disclosure here). Fact that something has happened may help your argument that the risk is low but not that it is zero (although they did catch it).

​As I said above, 2.5 vs 10 is not that much in blocktimes. In that particular instance Bitcoin chose to optimize for lower trust assumptions over optimal blocktimes. Higher orphan rate is a definite cost, but at least definite one. On the other hand, as we are seeing with many chains, trading away decentralization to save for small optimizations very rarely just ends up trading away small amounts of decentralization.

[athanred]

But now, in 2026, 15 years after the first altcoin was launched, I am a bit disappointed.

Why are you disappointed? Most altcoins were created, because of one reason: mining. If people would be able to mine BTCs directly, from Bitcoin Core, without using any mining pools, and they would receive fractions of satoshis on a regular basis, then they would have no reason to make any new altcoin. Most (if not all) altcoins were made, because mining BTCs became too hard. However, if users could get a block template, mine it, and see it accepted in some P2P subnetwork, then they would never need any altcoins, because that's how any feature can be enabled.

Monero and Grin as privacy coins for example

I think some of these features will appear on BTC, sooner or later. For example in the form of Silent Payments. In general, whole subnetworks could use single UTXOs, and then peg-ins and peg-outs could work directly between one subnetwork, and another. Then, BTC could check the Proof of Work, and a given subnetwork could check all other rules between its own peers. But of course, if there would be no consensus for sidechains, then developers will keep launching completely new chains, just to mine a lot of coins, and sell them for BTCs.

Altcoins with fast block times?

Faster block times are possible, without making any altcoin at all. For example: many mining pools send shares every 30 seconds or so, even though the block time is set to 10 minutes. And P2Pool created a chain of blocks, where they appeared every 30 seconds, and were 20 times easier to produce, while also being compatible with the mainnet. If you need a faster block time, then it can be done, just by introducing fractional confirmations. For smaller payments, it would be sufficient in practice, because the cost of making a Proof of Work share would be bigger, than the transferred amount, so there would be no incentive to cheat.

Privacy coins? Are less scalable.

Well, sidechains, and other second layers, usually have one nice feature, which (by default) is not there, when you have only the first layer: you can remove data, after some time. If you have Lightning Network, then you can finalize things on-chain, and then you can safely remove all historical LN transactions, without harming anyone. In exactly the same way, sidechain history can be discarded periodically, after being settled on-chain. And even all of the history from the first layer can be also trustlessly pruned, if it would be committed to some upper "layer zero".

And smart contract chains suffer from MEV and other vulnerabilities.

If by MEV you mean Miner Extractable Value, then it is one of the reasons, why there is no consensus to have sidechains on BTC. However, BTC by itself allows you to make such scripts, for example by using OP_SIZE on a DER signature. Then, any user can say "I want to use signature with N bytes or smaller", and any miner can grab this transaction, and move coins anywhere else, by producing a second valid signature. Which means, that if MEV is the problem, then it is already there on BTCs, and it is a matter of putting more coins on such contracts, to see it being exploited.

Does somebody think there is any altcoin project that is, on a whole, "better" than Bitcoin?

No. There are only some good ideas, which should be imported by Bitcoin, where some developers were not skilled or patient enough, to reach consensus, and deploy it on BTC. And then, when they had a choice, to keep talking with people, and convincing them, or just launching their own chain, and making a lot of profits, then they chose the path, which gave them more money, even if it was less beneficial for the users. And then, by mining their own chains, and selling these coins for BTCs, they quickly became wealthy, and stopped caring about improving things further, because they already reached more, than they hoped for.

We need that kind of mindset. That will bring innovation and the result will be "better than Bitcoin".

That kind of mindset requires a lot of patience, and thinking about deploying things, despite it being heavily criticized. If anything like that would ever happen, then it would be just launched by someone, on top of BTC, without asking for permission. Because you can always invent something better, however, existing participants have a strong incentive to keep things unchanged. People are worried, that if something new will be deployed, then BTC will collapse, so it is better to just maintain, what we have, and make as small changes, as possible.

Satoshi created Bitcoin to solve a problem not to fill his own pocket.

This is yet another reason to think, that if something significant is prepared, then it will remain hidden for a long time, and then suddenly it will appear somewhere. Satoshi started working on Bitcoin in 2007, and kept doing it for almost two years, before mining the Genesis Block in 2009. If anyone has a great idea, then for any blockchain-based code, there is a huge incentive to keep testing things secretly, and reveal them later, because once they are deployed, it will be easier to launch an altcoin, than to convince BTC community to introduce any changes.

[d5000]

Gemini's answer depends on the question that you ask it. I guess, those estimates are lower theoretical bounds.

In fact, in the answer I got two different values (for different "resilience" values of the network, i.e. the disposition of the other miners to simply "accept" selfish mining or actively combat it) but in both cases, the difference between the "10 minute chain" and the "2.5 minute chain" was similar.

Furthermore, bitcoins forks often have lower activity level. There are less nodes and less transactions. Blocks are not full. Measured numbers of "wasted network power" might be much smaller on them.

This is true, but here what was interesting for me was simply the "feature" of a lower block time - i.e. I framed the question as if all other variables were the same (block propagation/compact blocks etc.). If a "real altcoin" like LTC worsens its overall resistance to selfish mining and/or the "network waste edge" for large pools due to other configuration settings or features, then this was out of scope of the question.

Why are you disappointed? Most altcoins were created, because of one reason: mining.

There were some proposals, like smart contracts, which were marketed as if they were able to solve real world problems. It seems however that Bitcoin's limitations are more or less also the "blockchain technology" limitations. So as of now, it seems unlikely a coin would, for example, come up with a better scalability solution (which may be the biggest issue to solve) without sacrificing decentralization -- unless we move to L2s, of course.

re: new privacy features appearing on Bitcoin - I agree. That's also why I am critical to too much state/government usage. (The new privacy protocols like Shielded Bitcoin being proposed are perhaps a good excuse to update this thread ...)

Faster block times are possible, without making any altcoin at all.

Would that need a soft fork?

And even all of the history from the first layer can be also trustlessly pruned, if it would be committed to some upper "layer zero".

That indeed looks like an interesting feature for Monero and friends: to transform into a sidechain and then adopt a mini-blockchain (periodical pruning) design. I can imagine such a coin/solution becoming popular could bring the answer closer to "yes" again.

[HajiBagi]

Bitcoin is still king and I don't see any Altcoin coming close to it. Avalanche is a good coin from a technical side and it is also a scarce coin but it can compete for Bitcoin.

There are some altcoins that are very good and many people like to invest in it, but they can never be better than bitcoin, i read many reply here and some people said there are Altcoins that is better than bitcoin, that is their own opinion but i don’t think there will be any altcoins currently better than bitcoin, i don’t know in the future but for now i don’t see any Altcoins doing better than bitcoin, there might be a reason why some altcoins will be seen as more better than bitcoin, but generally, bitcoin is better than any coin in the world right now.

Bitcoin has been the best for many years, we have seen how many coins have been introduced and they did not end, some investors are regretting why buying them from the beginning, but it will be difficult to see someone complaining about about bitcoin, unless they do not understand bitcoin.

[athanred]

Would that need a soft fork?

Well, P2Pool worked without any soft-forks, so not really. And it didn't lose its popularity because of faster block times, but rather because of too huge coinbase transactions, and other issues. If you have a chain with too long block times, then making them shorter is not a problem. As I said: if times below 10 minutes per block would be unsafe, then centralized mining pools wouldn't send new templates every 30 seconds.

By the way: the idea of Weak Blocks is far from being new. We don't have such things, because there is no consensus to merge it into Bitcoin Core. It is too close to the idea of Merged Mining, which is not accepted by some people. Also, fractional confirmations would show people, that Lightning Network without mining can be flawed, so it could be abused to launch some attacks on it, and it is easier to hide these issues, by claiming that sidechains are bad (even though there is not that much difference between stealing all coins from a sidechain, and stealing all coins from some LN channel, in exactly the same way: by confirming an old state of the subnetwork).

to transform into a sidechain and then adopt a mini-blockchain (periodical pruning) design

Who knows, maybe they will. Unfortunately, people who wanted to make sidechains, are trying to make their coins worse, by introducing bad things, like moving coins from Patoshi's blocks. Which means, that even if we have people with good ideas, then still, they are actively trying to sabotage "an honest launch", by adding unnecessary things like that, because they want to specifically make an altcoin, instead of making something, which could be beneficial for BTC. Another example of that is eCash being launched without Merged Mining with BTC. The only reason they don't want to use Merged Mining on their altcoin, is because it could make BTC stronger, and Paul is simply tired of trying to reach consensus for so many years, so he wants to just make anything, which will bring him more profits (instead of launching something, which would give him less coins, but would be more useful for the community).

[StarenseN]

No, there is not altcoin "better" than Bitcoin.  Yes, some may have new or improved features but lack the history and store of value that Bitcoin has.  Besides, without Bitcoin, there would be no Altcoins and if Bitcoin failed early on, Altcoins would have failed as well.

In my opinion, the most important point in the value of bitcoin that altcoins will not be able to afford is, it has been cursed and despised dead but still alive and so far developed and continues to be adopted ranging from retail to the state, a strong and intelligent community, whenever there is a threat the community has many proposals for Bitcoin Improvement until now even quantum threats have begun to be anticipated, therefore bitcoin's resilience is not necessarily only in the form of one or two nights, but it's been shaped by the dedication of a large community for more than a decade.

In fact Bitcoin has failed in both technical and market terms if you remember that, but improvements are always being made so that it can survive and always be number one and be the best.

I don't really see where bitcoin failed in both technical and market terms? Yes, there were a few improvements onchain but that did not make any changes in the existing chain. The technicals are still the same without any change. The improvements were just an added layer of security of benefits which did not change the core functions. Bitcoins have been my keen focus when it comes to cryptocurrencies and I am pretty sure this is the same for almost all of us.

Now, we can't imagine any other altcoin surpassing bitcoins. Bitcoins have been the backbone of cryptocurrencies and will always be. With new altcoins being launched, there would also be better developments with bitcoin.