Bitcoin Cash is more centralized than Bitcoin

A LARGER SIZE OF THE BLOCK, LESS NUMBER OF NODES IN THE NETWORK

By Alex Vallenilla / @alexvallenilla

The bifurcation that emerged in the Bitcoin network, on August 1, 2017, when Bitcoin Cash emerged, has brought a strong debate in the community that develops cryptocurrencies, as well as advanced users, miners, companies, exchanges, among others. The reason is that the two sides claim to have the original bitcoin of Satoshi Nakamoto, in any case, the original project no longer exists, the Bitcoin side had to implement the SegWit protocol and the Bitcoin Cash side, changed the size of the block of 1 Mb to 8 Mb, to allow more transactions in less time, the latter is an important aspect to review.

It will not be easy to determine which of the two bitcoins, is the one created by Satoshi Nakamoto, since both have modifications. But there is a point that should be highlighted in the case of Bitcoin Cash and is that the creator of Bitcoin always proposed that it should be decentralized and if they are compared, at the moment there is one more centralized than the other, regardless of the advantages or disadvantages that have either of the two proposals.

One of the reasons that the size of the block in the Bitcoin network is 1Mb, is because Nakamoto sought to avoid large operations that would allow "spam" and that this would end up accepting double payments or fraudulent operations, a block of major of size is rejected by the network. Another aspect is that at the time of the launch of Bitcoin, mining did not exist in an industrialized way, it was thought that the nodes would be totally decentralized and that a common user could download the chain of blocks to his hard disk, without necessarily being a miner , but provide confirmation of the built blocks. This is possible because every 10 minutes, a 1Mb block is downloaded and any common user can store the entire database on their computer.

In the case of Bitcoin Cash, the 8Mb block makes the chain of blocks in this network seven times larger than Bitcoin, which complicates ordinary users. Currently those who do not do mining, use digital wallets in websites, cold wallets, or simply use wallets that do not download the block chain, because it uses the cryptocurrency in a part of the process, without having to be a node for verification or confirmation of blocks , especially if you do not have incentives to do so. But download Bitcoin Cash data, is out of reach of ordinary users, this reduces the number of participating nodes in the network and is only possible for mining companies or large capacity users, generally for a common user it does not make sense to download the Bitcoin block chain, much less Bitcoin Cash, which by the size of its block is seven times larger.

In the previous point, it then appears that industrial miners would adopt the position that it is not necessary for someone to download the chain of blocks and that a person as a common user does not have to be a node to confirm or verify transactions. This is contradictory in the proposal that the cryptocurrency be decentralized, since at the time of making important decisions for changes in the network, the active nodes, for their ability to adopt or reject protocols that change the nature of cryptocurrencies, are those that achieve consensus for these changes, updates or control of them, as happened with the rejection of Bitcoin XT a couple of years ago. In Bitcoin achieving consensus is more difficult, because the distributed database is more accessible by people in the world, therefore more democratic, while not with Bictoin Cash, making this cryptocurrency less decentralized than the first one that came into operation , under the control of mining companies or corporations behind the bifurcation. / 03/17/2017