Crypto and Differential Calculus

In mathematics, differential calculus is concerned with the study of the rates at which quantities change. Back in the early 20th century, when motors even in supercars were weak by today’s standards, their top speed was the awe inspiring number. It was not their acceleration, because there was not much of it.

The velocity is the first derivative of the position with respect to time, acceleration is the second derivative of the position with respect to time. As such, acceleration is a better indicator of the strength of a motor and who knows: maybe in future the third derivative — acceleration of the acceleration — will be something owners of their private spaceships will boast about.

Back to Earth and crypto. Many cryptocurrencies and their fans today seem to be stuck in their era of first derivations. “We have xxx transactions per second! (tps)” you hear them say. Or “We only use xxx KWh per transaction!” As a smart investor, one should be able to look behind this status quo facade and examine how this present state has changed in the past and how it is supposed to change in the future.

Only from this — the rate at which quantities change — you can see the true potential of a given crypto, which includes its technology, community and development team.

Now you may certainly assume as the core developers of Burstcoin we are biased, but we prefer to believe to have an objective view on technology development. Burstcoin is not our first project. Naturally we strive to pull Burstcoin in a direction that we believe yields the most promising technological gains and we think we are allowed to do so at a faster pace than others do.

That’s where the second derivative comes into play and what do we mean by “are allowed to do so” anyway? Let’s look at our great paragon — Bitcoin. The king of crypto has been sitting on its transaction capacity of 7 tps pretty much since its inception. SegWit and some improvements here and there brought maybe 30%, but in the course of this there were several splits of BTC into BTC Cash, Gold, Diamond, Ore and what not, because no consensus could be reached about the way to achieve e.g. a higher transaction capacity.

Same as Burstcoin and its Dymaxion, the Lightning Network of Bitcoin promises to raise this transaction capacity by several orders of magnitude. If you are unable to think in said “second derivations”, not only will you have trouble estimating which of these two cryptocurrencies has the higher potential — you will simply come to a wrong result.

Your first derivation thinking will show you the status quo. Bitcoin is big and its networking effect is indisputable. Burstcoin may get a bonus for the effort, but looking at the status quo this small coin just seems like one of many.

We do not think — never did — that we are the better development team than the Bitcoin guys, but we are beginning to suspect that our community has mimicked the huge advancements of the coin by becoming a better and more unified community than that of Bitcoin. It is this unification that allows us to move forward fast. It would not come as a surprise if some Bitcoin devs would envy us for it.

History Analysis to the Rescue

Most of us have trouble predicting the future, especially when our crystal balls are in for repair, so maybe observing the past can help. One year ago, Burst had a transaction capacity of 1 tps. If Bitcoins 7 tps is considered insufficient, then 1 tps certainly is nothing more than a toy system.

Burstcoin was sitting on its 1 tps level for 3 years and 10 months since its creation and we consider about 2 of these 3+ years to have been a dormant phase. Bitcoin on the other hand has been sitting on its 7 tps level for about 8 years before SegWit gave it some 30% so maybe it is fair today to say bitcoin has 7–9 tps.

Today, Burstcoin has a maximum tps of 80 and effectively a 5–7 times higher tps than Bitcoin. So in the past year — more precisely less than 3 months ago — Burstcoin on-chain transaction capacity surpassed that of Bitcoin significantly and could now bear the transactional load of 5–7 Bitcoin networks which is slightly above Ethereum or Litecoin level.

In terms of energy requirements Bitcoin used a year ago around 200 KWh per transaction and is at 900 KWh today. Burstcoin had an average of 75 Wh per transaction then and has a 2.3 Wh today, so it went from 2666 times more efficient to around 400'000 times more efficient. Because we do not want to be accused of skewing the numbers all this is still very generously rounded in favor of Bitcoin.

On the non-technical side, the community went from a quarreling and toxic place to a productive and fairly peaceful crowd — amused by the occasional troll.

Single Events or a Trend?

It’s hard to extrapolate from the past into the future if you have only few data points and cannot say with confidence if these are single events or a consistent trend. We believe the past year contains enough evidence to suggest a trend.

Maybe one such data point is where we see Burstcoin. What are we working towards to? Our 1 year of PoCC article on Burstcoin.ist tries to make it perfectly clear:

Let it be known henceforth, that we do intend to lead Burst to the Top10 and we will not settle for anything less!

And there is your trend. Because no matter the improvements, no matter the problems, victories or defeats along the way, this is the goal and we will not — repeat — settle for anything less.

There is no Dogma. We are not afraid to learn from other cryptos or blatantly “borrow” their concepts and implement these faster and better, because our community allows us to do so.

Our Pre-Dymaxion HF2 proposal is being currently discussed in the community, but overall receives positive sentiment towards its realization. If the community gives a go for this and we keep up our regular pace, by block height 600k — in roughly 205 days — Burstcoin with “Tethered Assets” will have the means to change the landscape of crypto and of Fiat.

Of course you can’t see that by just looking at the first derivative status quo of this little insignificant $16M MktCap rank 240-something coin. Look closer.