Linear History vs Parallel History: Knives vs. Forks

The blockchain creates a very interesting recording of history, the fork. Time moves in a linear fashion in the real world. You can never go back in history and see how things would be if you made a different choice.

Soft Fork

A blockchain has an immutable property. That means that things cannot be erased, corrected, or replaced. The only way to change in a blockchain system is to create 2 histories. There is a soft fork option where you eventually rejoin the original chain and again there is only 1 history, but this option is really available because of the ideology.

Two Histories: Hard Fork

Then there is the hard fork option. This is the option Satoshi Nakamoto claimed was the only way forward. It was clear to Nakamoto that hard forks were going to be inevitable because of the scaling issue. Scaling has to be resolved through reaching a consensus by those who own Bitcoin. Already we have seen Bitcoin go through some hard forks. With the very first fork approaching, everyone was watching to see whether Bitcoin would survive. It was a big relief to the owners of Bitcoin that it did indeed survive. However, did the community survive with Bitcoin?

Whenever there is a hard fork, everyone who owns Bitcoin at the time of the split retains their original Bitcoin and receives the equivalent in the “new Bitcoin”. What is supposed to happen in theory is that this “new Bitcoin” is supposed to be used. However because the old one is still available, and those who did not totally agree this was the way forward after consensus was reached, continued to use the original Bitcoin.

Now there are multiple versions of Bitcoin because again Bitcoin has hard forked and this has fractured the community into further factions. Instead of building on progressing Bitcoin, these factions are focusing on what is right about their group and wrong about the other group. This was not Nakamoto’s vision. He wanted Bitcoin to progress in a co-operative manner. To date (1 August 2018) there are three forks, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, and Bitcoin Private, according to Wikipedia.

Summary

The knife is long and straight with no way to bend or alter it. This is a metaphor for the linear movement of time in the real world. The fork has multiple prongs. It has been used as a metaphor, and pun, for the ability to create 2 virtual histories. The dual is a metaphor for the seemingly endless bickering and fighting in the Bitcoin community. Hopefully we will realize that Nakamoto really wanted a peaceful co-existence and progress for the good of Bitcoin, not the individual players.