Bitcoin SV DevCon 2020 Day 1 recap

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The inaugural Bitcoin SV DevCon was a huge success, bringing together some of the leading personalities in the Bitcoin space. On Day 1, the focus was on network theory, with Brendan Lee, Evan Freeman and Owen Vaughan being some of the speakers who took to the stage. Dr. Craig Wright also took the virtual stage for a fireside chat with nChain CTO Steve Shadders to explore what drives the nChain chief scientist and Bitcoin creator to make the world a better place.

Founding president of the Bitcoin Association Jimmy Nguyen opened the event, reminding the developers that Bitcoin is much more than just an electronic cash system. It’s also a global enterprise blockchain that can underpin some of the most powerful applications.

Bitcoin SV is the only version of Bitcoin that adheres to the protocol, design and vision of creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Jimmy shared. BSV is based on four pillars: stable protocol, scalability, security and instant transactions.

The Genesis hard fork, which took place on February 4, 2020, removed artificial limits on the Bitcoin protocol. It restored the full original functionality of Bitcoin Script, while also removing some detrimental changes, such as the pay-to-script-hash (P2SH).

BSV’s unbounded scaling is unmatched in the blockchain sector. This has allowed it to compete with centralized networks such as Visa, giving developers a better and more secure option. With the median transaction fee now at $0.000087, a new world of microtransactions has been made available to the developers.

“Our vision is a world where everything is not just online, but also on-chain, bringing many efficiencies and advantages,” Nguyen said.

The first day also saw presentations from other key personalities, the first of whom was Brendan Lee. Lee talked about how incentives drive the scaling of Bitcoin, encouraging the people who run the network to compete in a cooperative and honest manner. He further broke down the six steps to running the Bitcoin network as outlined in the Bitcoin whitepaper by Satoshi.

Jad Wahab, a software engineer at nChain, revealed some of the new tools for the BSV network, one of which is the merchant API (MAPI). MAPI is an interface to the nodes, allowing the users to find out in advance what fees are necessary for a certain service. More importantly, it allows users to submit transactions directly to transaction processors, bypassing the outer layers of the Bitcoin P2P network.

Evan Freeman spoke about the Bitcoin ledger and how it has combined the best qualities of preceding ledgers with the superior capabilities of the World Wide Web. Freeman, a curriculum specialist at the Bitcoin Association, broke down how the Bitcoin blockchain functions, how the nodes process transactions and some of the unique business opportunities that have come about with the massive scalability of BSV.

Owen Vaughan and Steve Shadders made their presentations as well, talking about nodes in the Bitcoin network and the intermediate Bitcoin Script respectively.

The highlight for Day 1 was the fireside chat between Dr. Craig Wright and Shadders. Dr. Wright shed light into his journey as a developer, having grown the passion for coding from a very young age. The nChain chief scientist also talked about his passion for educating other as he believes that we all have a moral obligation to make this world a better place. Other topics he went into included why he settled on Forth programming language, why Bitcoin has moved past substring opcodes and what makes him most proud of his invention.