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While Ethereum is a popular choice among developers, those building enterprise-scale solutions on the platform all eventually find themselves at the roadblock of scaling. Scaling problems and high transaction fees restrict the usability of Ethereum, EOS and other ledger systems, while consensus models create other difficulties.
By taking heed of the considerations that have led other blockchain entrepreneurs to migrate from other blockchains to BSV, developers can save themselves the time and trouble of launching their project on an unsuitable platform.
<h2>From Ethereum to the BSV blockchain</h2>
<h3>David Case, creator of CryptoFights (Kronoverse platform)</h3>
&lsquo;BSV is our only choice at this point. It solves all sorts of other problems, has built all sorts of other tooling, lets us rely on the commodity blockchain so we don't have to worry about how to solve the consensus aspects. But mostly, the scalability and the cheap transactions makes it our only choice.&rsquo;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiV_yCV1d4c" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> David Case: Building games for the Bitcoin blockchain</a>
In 2019, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53WMHNk5OmE" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Crypto Traders spoke to David Case</a>, lead architect of CryptoFights; a turn-based mobile game where all of the gameplay is recorded to the blockchain and both the ownership and history of your weapons and items are provable with Bitcoin forever.&nbsp;
Case&rsquo;s history with Bitcoin, developing on Ethereum and why he decided to switch his project to BSV
&lsquo;Obviously, BTC had made it such that Bitcoin was just not a development platform,&rsquo; Case says, remembering his first impressions in the crypto space. &lsquo;And in the Ethereum world, the mindset wasn&rsquo;t different from normal software development where you look at the tools you have, the framework you need to work in, and the capabilities available to you.&rsquo;&nbsp;
At this point he considered Bitcoin Cash the best blockchain implementation. The hash war piqued his interest in BSV.&nbsp;
&lsquo;As I tuned into some of the BSV livestreams, I started understanding the concept of a commodity ledger and realised it provided all the pieces that we were having to engineer some really complicated pieces for.&rsquo;&nbsp;
&lsquo;I could just use what&rsquo;s there and I don't have to worry about the consensus mechanism or coming up with a new proof-of-stake, proof-of-authority or an algorithm that says this is how this finalisation works and this is the trust mechanism around there.&rsquo;
When '<a href="https://blog.bitstocks.com/beyond-bitcoins-monetary-applications" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the restoration of OP_RETURN</a>&rsquo; occurred, Case had reached a definitive turning point. 'It helped me realise that I can store whatever I want out there, and that opened up the floodgates for what we're doing.&rsquo;
That&rsquo;s not to say that Ethereum doesn't work, says Case. &lsquo;In Ethereum the core idea is that anything you transfer or any transaction you make has to get mined right away. There isn't really a concept that says I can sign a transaction and pass it off and you can do something with it later.&rsquo;&nbsp;
While Ethereum takes a much broader approach by tackling a lot more issues, it can hem developers in.&nbsp;
&lsquo;BSV, on the other hand, is more of a foundational or a networking layer that just happens to have financials built into it. This opens the world up so that you can really do anything.&rsquo;
<h3>The benefits of building on the BSV blockchain</h3>
&lsquo;The huge and immediate wins are removing barriers to entry, and tied to that is cost,&rsquo; Case explains. &lsquo;With EOS, you've got to stake a significant amount of tokens to be able to do anything. That's a huge bummer. And once you try to onboard users and encourage them to play, they have to get the currency which is another barrier.&rsquo;
BSV offers all sorts of alternatives, like businesses paying for users&rsquo; transactions so they don't have to, or funding user accounts with micropayments to onboard them.&nbsp;
&rsquo;It's cheap enough that we can actually finance playing and still get all the benefits of things being recorded on the blockchain.&rsquo;&nbsp;
<h2>Why developers and businesses choose the BSV blockchain over of all other blockchains</h2>
On the first day of the CoinGeek conference in New York, <a href="https://coingeek.com/bsv-vs-other-blockchains-why-should-developers-and-businesses-utilize-bitcoin-sv/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a panel discussed the topic of &ldquo;BSV vs other blockchains: differences that matter for developers and businesses</a>&rsquo;. Here&rsquo;s what the participants had to say.
<h3>Kevin Healy, independent app developer and investor</h3>
Kevin Healy has been active in the Ethereum community for a long time. Nowadays he&rsquo;s working with the BSV blockchain instead, basing his decision on BSV&rsquo;s stable protocol and low transaction fees.
Healy&rsquo;s ambition is to create systems that deliver high quality fruit anywhere in the world in any season. He views the blockchain as technology that can make fruit production more efficient and improve the quality of produce with dozens of use cases, from providing farmers and merchants with blockchain tools to supply chain improvements.&nbsp;
Starting out, Healy used the Ethereum blockchain to program money and create smart contracts, but it didn't scale and transaction fees were too high. And so he switched over to BSV.&nbsp;
&lsquo;If I am going to build something that I want to be durable and long-lasting, I don&rsquo;t want the protocol to be changed all the time. The low transaction fees are also essential so we can do micropayments and that sort of thing.&rsquo;
<h2>From Hyperledger to the BSV blockchain</h2>
<h3>Peter Bainbridge-Clayton, founder and CTO of Kompany</h3>
Hyperledger is a well-known example of an enterprise system that is aiming to implement &lsquo;blockchain without economy&rsquo;. Peter Bainbridge-Clayton has worked with Hyperledger in the past, but has started to move away from the model to work on the BSV blockchain instead.
Bainbridge-Clayton believes incentives to be the key element of a blockchain.&nbsp;
&lsquo;With a public chain you have to incentivise the public, otherwise it is not a public chain. If you don't incentivise, no one is going to pay the electricity bill for free just to keep your chain happy. And so if you want to be doing lots and lots of transactions, which ours should be able to do because it's based on API calls, then you need that scalability. And I think that's where the crucial aspect actually lies,' he says.
Despite BSV&rsquo;s superior incentive scheme, Kompany has not abandoned Hyperledger, explaining: &lsquo;We are talking to potential customers who, for whatever reason, prefer things like the mission chains like Hyperledger. Most of those reasons are debatable at best, and some are just downright wrong. But again, you know, we're not going to turn down their business purely because they are under some misapprehension about the relative difference between permissioned and permissionless blockchains.'&nbsp;
<h2>From EOS and Bitcoin Cash to the BSV blockchain</h2>
<h3>Rohan Sharan, product manager of BlockReview</h3>
Like David Case, Rohan Sharan sees the difference between proof-of-stake and proof-of-work blockchains as a crucial point in favour of BSV. For him, it is clear that proof-of-work is a free market-driven force that incentivises users, developers and businesses, while proof-of-stake ends up in oligarchies.
Sharan&rsquo;s first encounter with Bitcoin was when he won prize money at hackathons. Participating in a college hackathon, he was tasked with building a decentralised app. It was the first time he encountered blockchain's smart contract feature, but he found it very problematic so he started comparing blockchain projects including EOS and Bitcoin Cash for usability.&nbsp;
'I realised that proof-of-stake is inferior to proof-of-work, and it's simply a marketplace to produce and consume negative space. And then I realised that we can have the whole vision of the Internet on BSV as it's proven it can scale. I'm very passionate about building the whole Internet that is not advertising-based.'&nbsp;
<h2>Learn more about developing on BSV</h2>
Ethereum is a popular hobby platform surrounded by an incredible community. But, if you want to build an enterprise level application and business around it, BSV is your best bet.
The BSV ecosystem is attracting a growing number of experienced developers armed with the latest developer tools as well as blockchain entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Want to try leveraging BSV&rsquo;s power to build your app on a massively scalable blockchain, with a stable platform of world-class security, supported by a global community of experienced, knowledgeable developers? Bitcoin Association is here to guide you. Sign up for DevCon notifications below, or register for a free <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/courses?category=3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">introduction to Bitcoin development course at the BSV Academy</a>.
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<a href="https://coingeek.com/news/tag/heartmail/">HeartMail</a> helps prevent spam and unsolicited messages and counters some of Big Social's excesses. This group includes well-known names like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn, nearly always based in Silicon Valley.
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These developers and businesses choose the BSV blockchain over of all other blockchains. Here&rsquo;s why.

BSV vs Ethereum and others - differences that matter for developers and businesses

bsv-vs-ethereum-and-others-differences-that-matter-for-developers-and-businesses

Software developers contribute some of the most creative and valuable inputs to the digital economy, yet it&rsquo;s notoriously difficult to monetise code autonomously. It&rsquo;s no wonder many developers dream of turning their software and applications into business ventures, allowing them to directly reap the benefits of their ingenuity.
Entrepreneurship is a difficult journey in any industry, but within the realm of Bitcoin development it&rsquo;s definitely more than a pipe dream.
To illustrate the point, and encourage you to invest in realising your dream of turning your Bitcoin application into a business, we look at four Bitcoin ventures that have afforded their founders the chance to become business owners.
<h3>Codugh</h3>
<a href="https://www.codugh.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Codugh</a>, led by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shashank-singhal-b7077bb6/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shashank Singhal</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-snow/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Andrew Snow</a>, won first place in the&nbsp;<a href="https://coingeek.com/winners-of-2nd-bsv-hackathon-announced-at-coingeek-seoul-conference/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">second BSV Hackathon</a>, which took place over the weekend of August 17-19, 2019.
Since both Andrew and Shashank are developers, they had used APIs and understood that it was difficult to monetise an API you had built. They wanted to address this problem, so they built an API marketplace utilising micropayments. Via the platform, developers can use an API and pay the code&rsquo;s developers for usage in microtransactions.
<h3>Codugh&rsquo;s words of advice for developers looking to start a business:</h3>
&lsquo;The biggest obstacle for participants is when they take a tech-first approach. Approach your project from a business-first approach, and then apply your technical knowledge afterwards. Think about a problem, a real problem that real users have. Think of a business idea that fixes that problem and then build an interesting technical solution that addresses your business problem.&rsquo;
<h3>Kyrt/mintBlue</h3>
Dutch-Belgian venture &nbsp;<a href="http://kyrt.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kyrt</a>&nbsp;placed third in&nbsp;<a href="https://bsvhackathon.net/hackathon/past/october-2020" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the third BSV Hackathon of October 2020</a>. Kyrt was created to provide any type of business or developer with pre-packaged API services, tailored SDKs and ready-made infrastructure that allows them to build applications on the BSV blockchain without needing to interact directly with Bitcoin Script and opcodes.
In 2021, Kyrt is still going strong, <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/how-mintblue-brings-the-power-of-bsv-to-business/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rebranded as mintBlue</a>&nbsp;with CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/recap-coingeek-new-york-conference-day-2/#Integrating%20business%20apps%20with%20BSV%20-%20Niels%20van%20den%20Bergh" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Niels van den Bergh</a>&nbsp;disclosing a recent commercial partnership with a major client that services a large consortium of companies. The partnership has allowed the start-up to broaden its focus from enthusiasts and SMEs to include enterprise clients. Its initial offering of microtransaction-based API services has also been expanded to include a range of services, from digital certificates to&nbsp;<a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/blog/blockchain-nfts-properties-value-proposition-applications" target="_blank" rel="noopener">non-fungible tokens (NFTs)</a>.
<h3>mintBlue&rsquo;s words of advice for developers looking to start a business:</h3>
<a href="https://bsvhackathon.net/success-stories/bitcoin-sv-hackathon-success-story-kyrt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Van den Bergh recommends</a>&nbsp;thinking about the business model behind each of your projects, and validating your idea as you develop it.
<h3>TonicPow</h3>
While TonicPow is a household name for many BSV&rsquo;ers, the project started from scratch during&nbsp;<a href="https://bsvhackathon.net/hackathon/past/may-2019" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the inaugural BSV Hackathon in May 2019</a>. The team of three, led by&nbsp;<a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/ambassadors/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin Association Ambassador for Panama Atilla Aros</a>&nbsp;alongside&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/person/luke-rohenaz" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Luke Rohenaz</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrz1818/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Austin Rappaport</a>, set out to directly monetise referral advertising. Since then, TonicPow&rsquo;s offering has expanded significantly.
In its first iteraton,&nbsp;<a href="https://bsvhackathon.net/success-stories/bitcoin-sv-hackathon-success-story-tonicpow" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TonicPow</a>&nbsp;was a little widget that you could put on your website to let out advertising space. While they still offer display widgets, TonicPow has grown into a promotion marketplace where brands can create a campaign and find relevant promoters for their offering. &lsquo;Brands remunerate promoters utilising micropayments. Every time a promoter meets the campaign&rsquo;s goal by sharing a post, generating a click or a conversion, they receive a small amount of money from the campaign&rsquo;s budget funded by the brand.&rsquo;
<h3>TonicPow&rsquo;s words of advice for developers looking to create a Bitcoin project:</h3>
&lsquo;Get familiar with the Bitcoin development tools that are out there, then use them to your advantage! Perhaps it&rsquo;s not really polished at this point, but it could be a powerful building block that you can leverage. Play around with them and try to build some little demos. You&rsquo;ll learn a lot in the process.&rsquo;
<h3>TrueReviews/Britevue</h3>
Trio of brothers Connor, Dylan and Kevin Murray, with their project&nbsp;<a href="https://bsvhackathon.net/success-stories/bitcoin-sv-hackathon-success-story-truereviews-britevue" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TrueReviews</a>, took second place in the&nbsp;<a href="https://bsvhackathon.net/hackathon/past/august-2019" target="_blank" rel="noopener">second Bitcoin SV Hackathon</a>&nbsp;that took place over the weekend of August 17-19, 2019.
The concept of TrueReviews was about building some element of monetary value into online reviews. The platform also uses Bitcoin blockchain to introduce rewards so businesses can take ownership of their online reviews: &lsquo;How this would work is that you&rsquo;d go into a shop and purchase a product, and your proof of purchase would be linked to an online review platform via the blockchain. This way, businesses can validate that people who review them have actually purchased their products. A business could also offer their customers a reward in exchange for leaving a review. By using smart contracts, the platform will automatically unlock a reward, whether they leave a positive or a negative review.&rsquo;
Before participating in the BSV Hackathon, Connor was working for a medical record software company, but thanks to TrueReviews (presently rebranded as&nbsp;<a href="https://britevue.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Britevue</a>) he is able to work for himself and hire other people to work on the platform.
<h3>Britevue&rsquo;s words of advice for developers looking to create a Bitcoin project:</h3>
&lsquo;Be forward-thinking when designing your business. We have been held back for over 10 years in the way we think about building a business on Bitcoin, and it is important to identify opportunities where you can push Bitcoin forward.
There is an unbounded amount of opportunity in building needed&nbsp;<a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/courses?category=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">infrastructure for Bitcoin</a>&nbsp;businesses, and even if you are focused on application development you will need that infrastructure anyways. Don't wait for other people to solve your problems - solve them yourself and then sell the solution to other businesses in the space.&rsquo;
<h2>Next success story: yours?</h2>
If you found this blog valuable and you&rsquo;re looking for more resources to set you up for business success with Bitcoin, you are sure to benefit from attending the next Bitcoin SV DevCon. <a href="https://bsvdevcon.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sign up to be notified about the next event</a>&nbsp;to make sure you don&rsquo;t miss it.

To encourage you to turn your Bitcoin application into a business, we look at four Bitcoin ventures that have afforded their founders the chance to become business owners.

To encourage you to turn your Bitcoin application into a business, we look at four Bitcoin ventures that have afforded their founders the chance to become business owners.

Build on Bitcoin, become your own boss

build-on-bitcoin-become-your-own-boss

Relative to Python, JavaScript, or C++, Bitcoin Script is a niche programming language with those familiar with it being few and far between. Developers experienced in its use are as rare as hen&rsquo;s teeth.
Is Bitcoin Script a passing curiosity, or is it worth adding to your developer toolbox?
The fact is that Bitcoin is not going anywhere. On the contrary, blockchain is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, with more than 400 projects built on the BSV blockchain alone. And with <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/what-bsv-blockchain-is-and-why-it-is-the-infrastructure-for-the-data-economy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blockchain being positioned to function as the infrastructure for the data economy</a>, Bitcoin Script might yet become one of the world&rsquo;s most ubiquitous languages.
If you want to learn Bitcoin Script to position yourself as an expert when that time comes, we spoke to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesrscott/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">James Scott</a>, Engineering Operations Manager at blockchain technology leader <a href="http://nchain.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">nChain</a> to give you some guidance.
<h2>Is it worth adding Bitcoin Script to your repertoire?</h2>
Bitcoin Association (BA): What is Bitcoin Script, in plain language?
James Scott (JS): Bitcoin Script is a programming language that's included as part of every single transaction in Bitcoin - it's not an optional component, but part of the 'plumbing' of the BSV blockchain.
Like any programming language, it lets you execute commands based on certain conditions to implement basic or more sophisticated behaviours. Let's take smart contracts as an example: if you wanted to sell a house via a smart contract, you could program the transaction to transfer the funds only if specified conditions are met.
BA: As the engineering operations manager at nChain, you are in charge of hiring. How difficult is it to find developers who know Bitcoin Script?
JS: It's very difficult. I've seen a lot of CVs, but there aren't many people out there with significant experience in Bitcoin Script. Occasionally I find people who have played around with it a bit.
The interesting thing about Bitcoin Script is that it's relatively easy to learn. It's based on FORTH, a very compact programming language from the &lsquo;70s, which gives it a certain pedigree. It utilises reverse polish notation, which every software engineer will know. But although you can learn the basics fairly easily, it's no substitute for having some experience of using it to solve problems.
BA: If someone wants to get beyond the basics of Bitcoin Script, what should they do?
JS: If people were interested in getting better at it, I would recommend trying to solve some problems with it yourself. Try writing your own code to test it out, and see if you can get it to work. These personal projects are also great for interviews, because you can point to some of the things you've done and talk about it more tangibly. But more than that, it will help you get familiar with solving problems in ways that make the most of what Bitcoin and the blockchain is best at, instead of continuing to solve problems the same way it&rsquo;s always been done.
BA: For which job roles do you expect candidates to know about Bitcoin script and have experience with it?
JS: Writing Script would be part of what our software engineers do, and they'd be using other languages like Python, Go and C++ as well. Where people with Script experience become indispensable is when clients approach us to apply blockchain to their use case and we need to write a script to run on top of our foundational services. Part of the skill is to write the script, but it's also essential to be able to identify when a script is (and is not) the best way to solve the problem.
It's another tool in the software engineer's 'toolbox'. If you had a toolbox missing a hammer, you'd always have to use a spanner to knock in the nails, but it wouldn&rsquo;t be very smart. Having an understanding of all the different ways you can solve the problem is what we're looking for.
BA: Would you say there's demand for software developers with Bitcoin Script experience at present?
JS: Most certainly! Not just at nChain, but for all early blockchain adopters across different industries. Although nChain is set up to service the growing demand in enterprise blockchain usage, there will be clients who will want to hire Bitcoin Script engineers themselves, potentially to make further use of the fundamental services that we already offer - it will depend on their requirements and preferences.
The demand could jump at short notice, since blockchain has been discussed as a future technology for a long time now and if early adopters gain a USP, all their competitors will want to act quickly. When companies decide it's time to make use of the blockchain, they'll need people to advise on how best to implement it for their specific use cases, as quickly as possible. If you're in the position to offer your expertise, you could have the opportunity for a really interesting role and even some rapid career advancement. Obviously the timing is hard to predict, yet you don't have to quit your job and just become a Bitcoin Script Engineer. It's the kind of thing that you can play around with in the evening, solving problems that you come up with, or trying to solve existing problems in a different way using Bitcoin Script.
BA: If someone has experience with Bitcoin Script already, would there be job opportunities for them at nChain?
JS: Yes, absolutely. I would suggest that they just send us their CV. We always have direct roles that we're looking to fill, but there's been cases where we came across someone with a good skill set, and decided to get them on board because we knew they would be helpful and we would have interesting work for them. Get in touch with us, and even if we don't have roles available right away, you'll be on our radar for when something comes up.
<h2>Attend future Bitcoin SV DevCons for free</h2>
If you found this blog valuable, you are sure to benefit from attending the next Bitcoin SV DevCon. <a href="https://bsvdevcon.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sign up to be notified about the next event</a> to make sure you don&rsquo;t miss it.

Is Bitcoin Script but a passing curiosity, or could it be worth adding to your developer&rsquo;s toolbox? This is what blockchain leader, nChain&rsquo;s James Scott has to say.

Bitcoin Script - a valuable skill for software engineers to add to their toolbox

bitcoin-script-a-valuable-skill-for-software-engineers-to-add-to-their-toolbox

Keeping a record of transactions, contracts and laws has been commonplace throughout human history. Even so, these records have been subject to destruction, loss and lack of validity. <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/blog/recommended-resources-for-bitcoin-sv-blockchain-developers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Blockchains like BSV</a> enable the creation, storage and transaction of information without these risks. At <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSuFtCaSu6o" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BSV Devcon 2020, Curriculum Specialist for Bitcoin Association Evan Freeman</a> delved into the infrastructure of Bitcoin and how the transactions within it comprise a long, immutable ledger of information while dispelling some of the common misconceptions about ledgers and nodes on BSV.
For those who missed out on Evan&rsquo;s presentation, this transcript highlights the key points of each section.
<h2>Ledger systems through the ages</h2>
When we're trying to understand incentives within a technology, we have to understand how we interact with that technology and how that technology changes us through that interaction.
If we look at the history of ledgers, we can see that our ledger systems have adapted in tune with society.
<h2>Ancient Mesopotamia: Clay ledgers</h2>
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/09/23/614c7cce1e9c1Clay-ledgers.jpg" alt="" />
<a href="https://www.aspireauctions.com/#!/catalog/81/453/lot/20566" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Babylonian food disbursement ledger 1800BC</a>
In ancient Mesopotamia, clay tablets were used as administrative ledgers. The tablet above is an example of such a ledger. Inscribed with cuneiform text, it has seven columns recording disbursements of food to various individuals listed in the final column.
Imagine trying to integrate our financial system with a clay tablet ledger system!
<h2>Medieval - Renaissance Europe: double-entry ledger system</h2>
One of the more significant developments in the advancement of ledgers prior to Bitcoin was the invention of the double-entry ledger. This made it possible to lend money at scale.
In Italy, where the double-entry method was established, people began to lend out money for interest. In time, this led to a tremendous amount of growth as businesses began to flourish. Italy became a prominent economic power that went on to establish global trade routes and lead the Renaissance.
The doubly-entry ledger is a system of bookkeeping in which every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry to a different account. The double-entry ledger has two equal and corresponding sides known as debit and credit. This is what we've been using for the last 526 years, since Leonardo da Vinci's friend Luca Pacioli invented it in 1494.
<h2>Contemporary era: Bitcoin</h2>
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/09/23/614c811cc0ea1ContemporaryEraBitcoin.jpg" alt="" />
Bitcoin combines the time-tested integrity of the stone block with the information recording capabilities of a ledger. This is multiplied by the near-instant connectivity of the World Wide Web, resulting in the first global public ledger.
Now we can begin to see that the <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/what-is-bitcoin-ebook" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin ledger</a> is significantly more than its chain of blocks. Rather, it's the information ordered by those blocks that make up the ledger.
<h2>Bitcoin: an evolved ledger system</h2>
As a ledger, Bitcoin is fulfilling the age-old societal need of data keeping in a new, significantly better way. Here&rsquo;s how it works.
<h2>The Bitcoin ledger&rsquo;s content and structure</h2>
Just as stone blocks form the structure of the pyramids, so the chain of blocks form the structure of the <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/what-is-bitcoin-ebook" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin ledger</a>. Empty blocks provide nothing for the ledger, it is the transactions within the blocks that shape the ledger. We could also say that it's the validated transactions that are the ledger and the blocks are the structure in which they are ordered and recorded.
In Bitcoin, there is no means of centralised decision-making, so each node must operate individually within the network rules to form a consensus on the ordering of events.
A block allows for this ordering to take place by creating a digital proof using the combination of the previous products, hash and the hash of the new transactions to create a timestamp.
Combining these elements forms a block of data that is subjected to proof-of-work and then built upon by other nodes, creating a chain of timestamped data field blocks that form a single agreed-upon transaction history.
<h2>How are blocks formed?</h2>
<blockquote>Each timestamp includes the previous timestamp in its hash, forming a chain, with each additional timestamp reinforcing the ones before.</blockquote>
<a href="https://craigwright.net/bitcoin-white-paper.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin white paper section three, &lsquo;Timestamp Server&rsquo;</a>
A Bitcoin block consists of an ordered set of transactions. The network considers each transaction to be a separate item or event, and builds the blocks as such. As transactions are received into the network, nodes assemble them in structured database entries called blocks.
Blocks are a timestamp for all the transactions they contain and represent proof of existence for the information within. In order to connect the block to the previous blocks in the chain, a block's header must include the hash of the block upon which it is built. This link forms a single chain of valid blocks leading back to the very first block - the Genesis block.
After the transactions are added into a block template, nodes perform work on a difficulty puzzle that must be solved to form a valid block. The solution proves that the node proposing the block has performed the work necessary for that block to be valid.
Every time a new block is added to the chain, the cumulative proof-of-work built upon all previous blogs is increased. In this way, as time passes, transactions become more secure.
When a node finds a valid block, each transaction is published as a part of that block and through the hash function, it can be provenly shown to have existed at the time the block was found.
Blocks are broadcast across the whole <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/what-is-bitcoin-ebook" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin network</a> and are accepted or rejected by the rest of the nodes that are competing to build blocks.
<h4> Key takeaway: Bitcoin embodies the principle of coopetition: cooperation between competing parties </h4>
<h2>The Bitcoin ledger&rsquo;s immutability</h2>
If a node wanted to alter a past transaction, it would have to redo the proof-of-work for that block and all previous blocks, and must then maintain a leading chain reflecting those changes in order to fool other nodes.
This process of attempting to make invalid transactions appear valid is costly, as the attacking node must maintain a majority of the network hash. And even then, the attack is easily reversed as the honest chain overtakes the dishonest chain.
Once this occurs, an attacker's transactions are void and their investment and proof-of-work is lost. Additionally, such attacks are fully visible, making them legally risky for operators of dishonest nodes.
<h4> Key takeaway: in Bitcoin, fraud does not pay!</h4>
 The very nature of proof-of-work is such that the process cannot be faked or mirrored. By mirrored I'm referring to the case of a fork in a proof-of-stake chain, where a node keeps its state coins on both chains. If this was the case with proof-of-work, for every fork we've had, there would be an additional ASIC magically appearing for each of the ones already in existence, which is a ridiculous concept.
This brings me to an important point I want to make about proof-of-work: it ties the virtual to the physical in the sense that there are real resources being used to secure the ledger. The ASICs need to be manufactured, electrical utilities consumed, Internet infrastructure installed and maintained. These operations are an investment that signals a financial commitment to building blocks.
This activity is also impossible to fake. It&rsquo;s a very respectable business in which nodes become identifiable transaction processors. And so this requirement that a node uses CPU to cycle through combinations of nonce and <a href="https://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/index.php/Block_header" target="_blank" rel="noopener">block header</a> in order to participate in the block building process is a big part of the <a href="https://bsvdevcon.net/blog/bitcoin-economics-network-security-bitcoin-developers-conference" target="_blank" rel="noopener">incentive for nodes to behave honestly</a>.
<h4> Key takeaway: Bitcoin incentivises honest work</h4>
<h2> Who forms the blocks?</h2>
<blockquote>The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making. If the majority were based on one-IP-address-one-vote, it could be subverted by anyone able to allocate many IPs. Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote.</blockquote>
<a href="https://craigwright.net/bitcoin-white-paper.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin white paper, section four, &lsquo;Proof-of-Work&rsquo;</a>
Bitcoin has a long history of confusion as to who is and isn't a node. It's quite simple: those that don't participate in building blocks are not nodes, but rather <a href="https://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/index.php/Peer-To-Peer_Protocol" target="_blank" rel="noopener">peers</a>.
Since nodes are engaged in the competitive business of building blocks, do they require the complete record of all previous transactions in order to be able to build new, valid blocks? The answer is: no.
Once a transaction has been mined into a block, which has then been expanded on by the network, that transaction record is immutable. This means that anyone with a copy of that transaction can prove that it was created before the <a href="https://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/index.php/Block_timestamp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">block timestamp</a>, which is effectively every 10 minutes.
Once a transaction has been made, nodes are free to remove them from their copy of <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/what-is-blockchain-ebook" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the blockchain</a>. Past transactions are not necessary for the process of creating new blocks and needlessly consume data storage.
<h4> Key takeaway: Bitcoin removes the burden of storing the entire ledger to prove the existence of an item within its content </h4>
<h2>Node data storage requirements</h2>
<blockquote>Once the latest transaction in a coin is buried under enough blocks, the spent transactions before it can be discarded to save disk space. To facilitate this without breaking the block's hash, transactions are hashed in a Merkle Tree, with only the root included in the block's hash. Old blocks can then be compacted by stubbing off branches of the tree. The interior hashes do not need to be stored.</blockquote>
<a href="https://craigwright.net/bitcoin-white-paper.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin white paper, section seven, &lsquo;Reclaiming Disk Space&rsquo;</a>
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/09/23/614c830b9953bBitcoin-Society-3.jpg" alt="" width="623" height="307" />
For nodes to be able to remove individual transactions that have been placed in a block without affecting the integrity of the block hash, a data structure known as a Merkle tree is used. A Merkle tree enables a node to remove individual transactions from their record of a block and to retain only hashes of these transactions, or even hashes of the branch the transactions were in.
A node can provably show that the Merkle tree root used in the <a href="https://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/index.php/Block_header" target="_blank" rel="noopener">block header</a> is the one using the block hash, even with access to a minority of the total transactions in the block.
<h4> Key takeaway: Bitcoin is a dynamic network where nodes can come and go as they please, without affecting the data ledger&rsquo;s integrity</h4>
 If nodes don't need to store the transaction data, what do they need to store? The answer is the <a href="https://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/index.php/Block_header" target="_blank" rel="noopener">block header</a>.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/09/23/614c87c82d431Bitcoin-Society-Image-4.png" alt="" />
From the header, a node can see which block it builds upon, the time the block was discovered, and can validate the <a href="https://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/index.php/Proof_of_Work" target="_blank" rel="noopener">proof-of-work</a> done by the node that discovered it. The Merkle tree's contents that include all of the transactions of the block are not a part of the header and are unnecessary to prove the existence of a previously validated block.
Thanks to this data structure, a full record of Bitcoin&rsquo;s <a href="https://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/index.php/Proof_of_Work" target="_blank" rel="noopener">proof-of-work</a> for an entire year takes up 4.2MB of space. (Since blocks are generated every 10 minutes, a block header is approximately 80 bytes. If you multiply that by six, then 24, then 365, you get 4.2MB.)
<h4> Key takeaway: Given Bitcoin&rsquo;s efficiency with data storage, the only boundaries to the BSV ledger are the boundaries of imagination and creativity, as well as our temporary software and hardware limitations.</h4>
<h2> Bitcoin as a global triple-entry ledger</h2>
We've discussed the double-entry ledger system where each debit has to correspond to a credit. When it comes to Bitcoin, we can understand it as a triple-entry ledger, where the third entry is ordered and recorded into an immutable chain of blocks.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/09/23/614c834f078cfBitcoin-Society-5.jpg" alt="" />
This entry serves both as a transaction and a receipt, proving that an event occurred in a way that is vastly more efficient and secure than that of a double-entry ledger, to the point that falsifying or destroying entries is virtually impossible on the Bitcoin ledger.
<h4> Key takeaway: Bitcoin allows for the first permanent, objective and globally interoperable triple-entry ledger, open to everyone bounded only by the limits of our minds.</h4>
<h2> Bitcoin as a robust, global ledger system</h2>
If you're familiar with the story of the Library of Alexandria, you'll know of the vast knowledge and history that&rsquo;s estimated to have been lost with its destruction. Although the world lost countless important writings at Alexandria, it is but a fraction of lost ancient texts.
Since entries on the Bitcoin ledger are in the form of a transaction between wallet addresses in the same distributed public ledger, each transaction is linked together in a system of permanent and objective records. This means we won't lose important things anymore.
As Bitcoin is a system that provides honesty through transparency and <a href="https://bsvdevcon.net/blog/bitcoin-economics-network-security-bitcoin-developers-conference" target="_blank" rel="noopener">incentives</a>, we can increase the capabilities of our applications extensively by integrating with it.
Because the ledger itself is dynamic, users need not be burdened by the data of others. Instead, they can focus on what is needed for themselves. They still benefit from the <a href="https://bsvdevcon.net/blog/bitcoin-economics-network-security-bitcoin-developers-conference" target="_blank" rel="noopener">security, interoperability and provability</a> of a proof-of-work based global public ledger. As a result, digital businesses can offload their burden of security, reducing their infrastructure and operating costs that are often barriers to entry.
<h2>Usher in the Renaissance of data</h2>
The <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/blog/what-sets-bsv-apart-from-other-bitcoin-implementations-and-blockchains" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BSV blockchain</a> is the digital building blocks of a new Renaissance. This future Bitcoin-based economy will be more productive than our modern one because people will know better how to coordinate with each other using the information that is in the ledger.
People will be able to rely on the information that is in the ledger and it will be their virtual connection with everybody and everything.
In essence, <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/blog/recommended-resources-for-bitcoin-sv-blockchain-developers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the BSV ledger</a> allows for the world to cooperate, and Bitcoin rewards cooperation because cooperation allows for better success at profit-seeking.
<a href="https://bsvdevcon.net/blog/how-to-approach-a-bitcoin-business-venture-as-a-blockchain-developer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Developers and entrepreneurs who want to be successful in Bitcoin</a> have to be profit-seeking. And if you coordinate that profit-seeking with others, you increase the benefit for yourself and every Bitcoiner.
For those of you who want to participate in growing the real Bitcoin network, I urge you to leverage the <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/blog/what-sets-bsv-apart-from-other-bitcoin-implementations-and-blockchains" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BSV ledger</a> to build useful applications and services that draw other people to the network.
Bitcoin is needed now more than ever before, and BSV is able to provide the promise of <a href="https://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/index.php/Peer-To-Peer_Protocol" target="_blank" rel="noopener">peer-to-peer</a> digital cash and much more.
If you&rsquo;d like to learn more, <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/events/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">check out our latest and upcoming events</a>.
&nbsp;

Keeping record of transactions, contracts, &amp; laws is an age-old human practice. Bitcoin fulfills this age-old societal need in a new, significantly better way.

Bitcoin, the evolution of ledger systems and its influence on society

bitcoin-the-evolution-of-ledger-systems-and-its-influence-on-society

Have you managed to attend a Bitcoin SV DevCon yet? If not, don&rsquo;t fret! For those who missed out, we are making available written summaries of the most popular presentations of previous events.
In this presentation at <a href="https://youtu.be/BAcoN_GbMxU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin SV DevCon 2020</a> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-henslee-2a641350/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Josh Henslee</a> shared his approach for starting a Bitcoin business. His talk covered a range of topics that serve as a blueprint for aspiring developers cum entrepreneurs, including: 
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Generating revenue as an early stage entity</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Balancing business and developing</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">&lsquo;Co-opetition&rsquo; - how to walk the line between collaborating and competing</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How developers implement <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/bitcoin-micropayment-app-money-button-goes-invisible/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin micropayments</a> into their businesses to establish early revenue streams</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The dos &amp; don&rsquo;ts of operating a business in the Bitcoin space</li>
</ul>
<h2>Starting a Bitcoin business</h2>
<h3>Generating revenue from day one</h3>
Bitcoin apps should be generating revenue at alpha phase. Tools like <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/the-bayesian-group-and-money-button-partner-to-create-the-most-comprehensive-wallet-solution-in-the-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Money Button</a> and the simple power of <a href="https://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/index.php/UTXO" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin outputs</a> make paying yourself in the output trivial, so there's no reason not to do it. This is not to imply that developers should be profitable from day one, considering we are early adopters in a small industry.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/09/03/6131dd025487dHow-to-approach-a-Bitcoin-business-venture-as-a-blockchain-developer1.PNG" alt="" />
By paying your employees and team members via different Bitcoin outputs, you keep everyone motivated through the formative stages of a business. Imagine opening up your wallet and you see a stream of incoming payments throughout the day. A thousand Satoshi here; ten thousand there; oh, and one hundred thousand there. For me personally, that makes me want to earn more.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/09/03/6131dd0394589How-to-approach-a-Bitcoin-business-venture-as-a-blockchain-developer2.PNG" alt="" />
<h3>Communication</h3>
Because everyone is building on the same blockchain ledger, it&rsquo;s important to integrate with as many services as possible. It&rsquo;s worth our while encouraging our users to try out the many useful apps that other people have built. By doing so, we increase the number of transactions on the blockchain and create a more diverse ecosystem, benefiting all of us in the long run.&nbsp;
It would also be wise to keep the lines of communication open with other businesses, too. When you know what other people are working on, you avoid duplicating the same work and can collaborate on better ways to approach the problems you're both trying to solve. 
<h3>Co-opetition</h3>
Increasing the number of on-chain transactions and growing the ecosystem delivers benefits for all BSV developers. And so, even though, as a business, you want to generate more Bitcoin SV than your competitors, it&rsquo;s important to be both competitive and collaborative. This could mean implementing what others have built or copying and improving to deliver what users want. As a result, you can bring more users to the blockchain (communal benefit) and earn more bitcoins (individual benefit).
Using BSV applications like <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/videos/bsv-hackathon-success-stories-luke-rohenaz-tonicpow-video/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TonicPow</a> is a good example of participating in healthy <a href="https://coingeek.com/luke-rohenaz-how-tonicpow-can-compete-with-the-tech-giants-video/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">co-opetition</a>. By advertising another BSV application, you benefit the ecosystem, plus you can earn money for your efforts. Another simple way to do this is by following as many other BSV businesses and personalities on Twitter as possible and focus on amplifying their message by engaging with and sharing their content so they can reach as many people as possible.
<h3>Bitcoin micropayments change Internet development</h3>
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/09/03/6131df87456c9How-to-approach-a-Bitcoin-business-venture-as-a-blockchain-developer3.PNG" alt="" width="888" height="385" />
Micropayments can be used in ways that liberate developers and apps from requiring users to provide businesses and service providers with lots of personal information. One of my favourite quotes in <a href="https://craigwright.net/bitcoin-white-paper.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Bitcoin white paper</a> talks about how companies have to hassle their customers for more information than they would otherwise need because the payment is reversible. And if a company requires a credit card payment, they have to ask for even more personal information. But if a user pays per action on a platform, businesses don&rsquo;t need any information from them.
Bitcoin also makes CAPTCHAs redundant and removes the need for users to prove ownership of their email address to sign up for a new service or to log in. By simply swiping a <a href="http://moneybutton.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Money Button</a>, I can prove ownership of my wallet. Alternatively, I can even log in with a Bitcoin payment. At the same time, if a service requires payment, its users can pay for each microservice on the spot without ever having to create an account.
<h3>TLDR: Dos &amp; don&rsquo;ts when doing business in the Bitcoin space</h3>
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; height: 90px;" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 18px;">
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Do</td>
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Don't</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18px;">
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Leverage tools others have built</td>
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Don&rsquo;t build your own wallet</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18px;">
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Charge for your time</td>
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Don&rsquo;t run a &lsquo;full node&rsquo;</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18px;">
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Fundraise on-chain</td>
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Don't take functionality away</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 18px;">
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Pay employees in outputs</td>
<td style="width: 50%; height: 18px;">Don't implement legacy login systems</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Attend future Bitcoin SV DevCons for free</h3>
If you found this presentation valuable, you are sure to benefit from attending the next Bitcoin SV DevCon. <a href="https://bsvdevcon.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sign up to be notified about the next event</a> to make sure you don&rsquo;t miss it.

Josh Henslee shares his approach for starting a Bitcoin business, covering revenue generation, &lsquo;Co-opetition&rsquo;, and the new Internet built with micropayments.

How to approach a Bitcoin business venture as a blockchain developer

how-to-approach-a-bitcoin-business-venture-as-a-blockchain-developer

Have you managed to attend Bitcoin SV DevCon? For those who missed out, we are making the most popular presentations available in written format.
The most-watched <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/videos/bsv-devcon-2020-the-utility-of-bitcoin-script-video/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin SV DevCon presentation of 2020</a> was a practical session where nChain's Steve Shadders walked attendees through the basics of <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/videos/bsv-china-webinar-why-i-chose-to-become-a-bitcoin-script-engineer-zheng-hongfen-videog-scrypt-video/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin Script</a> and demonstrated a tool to make the language sleeker and more efficient for developers to use. Though this tool is still in the prototype phase, nChain hopes to launch it to the public later in 2021.
As most of this presentation comprises video demos, we have included a time-stamped video index after a summary of the theoretical content from Shadders&rsquo;s Bitcoin SV DevCon 2020 presentation.
<h2>Why Script?</h2>
Why was Script the language chosen to embody <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/sensible-contract-takes-major-step-towards-better-nfts-and-smart-contracts-on-bsv/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin&rsquo;s smart contract capabilities</a>?
&lsquo;Script is a language that is analogous to Assembly language. It looks very much like Assembly language, and the bytecode also looks very similar to the bytecode you see in a Java virtual machine and several other machines. This means that it is very compact,&rsquo; Shadders says.
Script lets you produce compact code that works very well on small microprocessors as it is a <a href="https://tsc.bitcoinassociation.net/standards/envelope-specification/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stack-based language</a>, and the way stack-based languages work is similar to how CPUs process operations.
&lsquo;It is also very fast because it is not very different from the native <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/recap-bitcoin-sv-devcon-2021-day-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forth</a>, which is frequently included in embedded systems like tiny CPUs and IoT devices, as well as military applications. Due to its simplicity and refined design, Forth is an incredibly resilient programming language.&rsquo;&nbsp;
<h3>The similarity between Bitcoin and embedded systems</h3>
Embedded systems are tiny, resource-constrained systems. Although <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/new-world-record-1-gigabyte-blocks-mined-on-the-bitcoin-sv-blockchain/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Bitcoin network is designed to be run by miners in massive data centres with plenty of resources</a>, we can draw some analogies between these two systems. Bitcoin is resource-constrained in the sense that on-chain processing incurs a cost which you want to keep as low as possible. Forth-like languages enable developers to express functionality in a compact and efficient way, making Script an ideal fit for the Bitcoin network.
&lsquo;Being a low-level language, it is also a foundation for more developer-friendly applications. <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/recap-bitcoin-sv-devcon-2021-day-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">JavaScript</a> is probably the most popular programming language at present when you look at its node.js incarnation, and it is also extremely user-friendly,&rsquo; Shadders says.
JavaScript fundamentally runs on top of Assembly, which interprets JavaScript code. The interpreter is written in C++, which then compiles into Assembly language, compiling native machine code instructions.
&lsquo;We can do similar things with Bitcoin Script, and I'm certainly not the first to experiment with this. The <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/videos/pitch-day-scrypt-video/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sCrypt team</a> has a different approach which is equally valid as it is better for some use cases. But the lower-level approach I'm about to demonstrate addresses cases where <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/recap-bitcoin-sv-virtual-meetup-the-americas-may-2021/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Script</a> might be more of an infrastructure than you need.&lsquo;
<h3>Script hacking for fun and profit&nbsp;</h3>
Bitcoin developers often experience native Script code as difficult to read and debug. Shadders notes that this is something that needs to improve so more developers can start working on Bitcoin Script in new and interesting ways to discover the latent potential of this fantastic tool.
&nbsp;
In the demos below, Steve introduces developers to a tool that will make their Bitcoin Script sleeker, more readable and more efficient.
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=67" target="_blank" rel="noopener">01:06</a> Why Script for Bitcoin?
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=151" target="_blank" rel="noopener">02:31</a> The similarity between Bitcoin and embedded systems
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=284" target="_blank" rel="noopener">04:44</a> Script hacking for fun and profit&nbsp;
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=1020" target="_blank" rel="noopener">17:00</a> What is a Stack?
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=1094" target="_blank" rel="noopener">18:14</a> Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) demo
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=1786https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=1786" target="_blank" rel="noopener">29:46</a> Compile-time vs Runtime demo
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=2166" target="_blank" rel="noopener">36:06</a> Script language features demo
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=2437" target="_blank" rel="noopener">40:37</a> The use of variables demo
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=2729" target="_blank" rel="noopener">45:29</a> How to add loops to the script demo
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=2845" target="_blank" rel="noopener">47:25</a> While loops demo
<a href="https://youtu.be/OxBBg7gOT34?t=3346" target="_blank" rel="noopener">55:46</a> Q &amp; A
<h2>Attend future Bitcoin SV DevCons for free</h2>
If you found this presentation valuable, you are sure to benefit from attending the next Bitcoin SV Developers Week. <a href="https://bsvdevcon.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sign up to be notified about the next event</a> to make sure you don&rsquo;t miss it.

The top presentation of our Bitcoin developers conference walks you through the basics of Bitcoin Script and how to make it sleeker and more efficient.

The top presentation of our Bitcoin developers conference walks you through the basics of Bitcoin Script and how to make it sleeker and more efficient.

Demystifying Bitcoin Script - Bitcoin developers conference

demystifying-bitcoin-script-bitcoin-developers-conference

Learn about Bitcoin nodes and the network by understanding what the network's topology looks like and what the terminology used to describe participants entail.

Defining Bitcoin’s network topology - Bitcoin developers conference

defining-bitcoin-s-network-topology-bitcoin-developers-conference

Brendan Lee gives participants of the 1st Bitcoin SV Developer Week an overview of the function of BSV nodes and the role of economics in the Bitcoin network incentive system.

Bitcoin economics & network security - Bitcoin developers conference

bitcoin-economics-network-security-bitcoin-developers-conference

Bitcoin SV&rsquo;s merchant API is your direct connection to nodes to get policy limits &amp; bitcoin miner fees, Merkle proofs, double-spend alerts &amp; submit transactions.

Bitcoin SV Miner Fee Calculation and Merchant API (mAPI)

bitcoin-sv-miner-fee-calculation-and-merchant-api-mapi

This year's edition of Bitcoin SV Developers Week, or Bitcoin SV DevCon 2021 is coming up in May. Last year&rsquo;s DevCon was the first to be presented virtually and we welcomed more than <a href="https://bsvdevcon.net/past-devcons/bitcoin-sv-devcon-july-2020" target="_blank" rel="noopener">3,400 unique participants</a>. Thanks to your interest, we expect an even bigger turnout this year.
If you are new to the Bitcoin SV world, we want to tell you about the potential we see for developing on Bitcoin and how Bitcoin SV enables these unique capabilities.
We also want to inform developers about Bitcoin Association and the<a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/bitcoin-association-annual-report-2019-extracts-developer-initiatives/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> resource</a><a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/bitcoin-association-annual-report-2019-extracts-developer-initiatives/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">s</a> and initiatives we offer as the global industry organisation that supports the growth and development of Bitcoin SV and its technical infrastructure, as well as the developers and enterprises that rely on it all around the world.&nbsp;
<h2>What is Bitcoin?</h2>
Bitcoin is a lot of different things to many different people. But our developers conference focuses on the powerful capabilities of Bitcoin you may not even be aware of and how to leverage them for powerful businesses, applications and services.
Bitcoin was introduced to the world through the famed<a title="Satoshi Nakamoto white paper" href="https://craigwright.net/bitcoin-white-paper.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Satoshi Nakamoto white paper</a>, who described it as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. The white paper was introduced in 2008 and the Bitcoin blockchain began in 2009.&nbsp;
Since then, there has been a misconception that Bitcoin is only an electronic cash system. People think of it as justdigital currency, not a powerful technology platform to build <a href="https://bitcoinsv.com/en/build-on-bsv/build-on-bitcoin-sv" target="_blank" rel="noopener">enterprise-class data applications</a>. But that is really what it is.&nbsp;
In addition to being a digital currency, Bitcoin is something even bigger - the fusion of data and money. This is inherent in its name: bit (data) + coin (money) combine to make Bitcoin.&nbsp;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/04/12/60744e0108b8fWhatIsBitcoin.jpg" alt="" />
Bitcoin is a commodity data ledger that allows data to be used to transfer monetary value, but it also offers data and technical functionalities. We want you to understand that's where its real technical power comes from.
<h2>What is Bitcoin SV?</h2>
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://cms.bsvdevcon.net/storage/uploads/2021/04/12/60744df732180BitcoinSV_Slide3.jpg" alt="" />
So, what is Bitcoin SV? Bitcoin SV emerged after years of debates over the future of Bitcoin and whether it could scale sufficiently to become a global enterprise blockchain that supports millions of different applications and services. By continuing the original protocol design and vision of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin SV is on its way to achieving this goal. It is both a<a href="https://bitcoinsv.com/en/learn/satoshi-nakamoto" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> peer-to-peer electronic cash system</a> and the <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/videos/bitcoin-sv-the-global-enterprise-blockchain-video/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">global enterprise blockchain</a> that all developers can use to build the most powerful applications for a blockchain-powered future.
<h2>Bitcoin SV&rsquo;s four pillars</h2>
Bitcoin SV is designed with four key pillars in mind: having a stable protocol, enabling massive scaling as Satoshi Nakamoto always envisioned, devoting itself to security with a professionalised approach to engineering and committing to the ability to do safe instant transactions.
<h3>A stable protocol with Bitcoin&rsquo;s original design</h3>
Why do we keep mentioning the protocol? Bitcoin is more than just a digital currency and a blockchain. Bitcoin is also a network protocol. Just like the Internet protocol, it is a foundational ruleset for an entire data network. It also provides the basis to create systems within or upon its ruleset, just like HTTP is a further protocol built on top of TCP/IP for the Internet and allows HTML to be distributed across the World Wide Web. This is important to understand because additional systems and rulesets are being built within and on top of the Bitcoin protocol.&nbsp;
<h3>Genesis hard fork upgrade</h3>
Bitcoin SV has almost completely restored the original Bitcoin protocol released by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. After years of deviation by prior protocol developers with the BTC implementation, in addition to similar restrictions introduced in the BCH implementation, the Bitcoin SV team successfully implemented the <a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/videos/bitcoin-sv-genesis-hard-fork-original-bitcoin-protocol-restored-on-4-february-2020-video/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Genesis hard fork on February 4, 2020</a>, to restore the original Bitcoin protocol.
The hard fork accomplished several goals. Crucially, it removed several artificial limits imposed on the protocol, such as the limit on the block cap size - thus removing transaction and data capacity restrictions and opened up all-new possibilities for developers and enterprises alike. Genesis also restored the full original functionality of Bitcoin Script, which is the programming language used within the Bitcoin protocol. The update also removed some detrimental changes that had been made to the Bitcoin protocol over time like <a href="https://bitcoinsv.com/en/build-on-bsv/build-on-bitcoin-sv" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pay-to-script-hash (P2SH)</a>. P2SH was an addition made to the Bitcoin protocol after Satoshi left the project to address perceived issues with bare multi-signatures. P2SH brought significant privacy and security issues, in addition to breaking the smart contract capabilities and transparency model of Bitcoin&rsquo;s original design.
<h3>Bitcoin SV Node software v1.0.7 release, February 2021</h3>
The <a href="https://coingeek.com/the-bitcoin-sv-node-software-releases-v1-0-7/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">latest release of the Bitcoin SV Node software</a> lifted the ancestor and child-pays-for-parent (CPFP) limit from 25 to 1,000 transactions. This facilitates an even broader spectrum of business use cases for Bitcoin SV by enabling longer chains of unconfirmed transactions.
The lifting of the ancestor limit is a big win for the digital asset ecosystem. Whereas before, an event could be recorded roughly every 25 seconds, now, sequences of events can be recorded within the space of a single second.
<a href="https://bitcoinassociation.net/steve-shadders/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Steve Shadders, Technical Director of the Bitcoin SV Infrastructure Team</a>, encourages developers to adjust their thinking to reflect the heightened ceiling for Bitcoin SV development.
&lsquo;People should really start thinking about applications that might make use of 100,000-long chains or even longer, because that will certainly be possible in the not-too-distant future. Once we&rsquo;ve tested the 1,000-transaction limit in the wild for a sufficient period, I expect that we will remove the limit entirely.&rsquo;
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A protocol must be stable to sustain an enterprise-class technology platform. Satoshi Nakamoto recognised this back in 2010, writing, &lsquo;The nature of Bitcoin is such that once versioned 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime.&rsquo;&nbsp;
Developers and big enterprises will only commit time and resources to build on a technology platform if its protocol is stable and its rulesets are not changing to invalidate or undermine the great applications that you have built.&nbsp;
<h3>Bitcoin&rsquo;s original protocol allows unbounded scaling</h3>
The second pillar of Bitcoin SV is massive scaling. Massive scale is critical for the ability to build powerful applications. For years, the Bitcoin community underwent scaling debates about whether Bitcoin should scale to bigger block sizes. <a href="https://bitcoinsv.com/en/learn/history-of-bitcoin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin Core has stayed at 1MB - 2MB in block size</a>, allowing only three transactions per second on average, with a maximum of seven transactions per second. This is nowhere near the Visa network's average throughput of 2,000 transactions per second and a far cry from its peak scale of 56,000 transactions per second.&nbsp;
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The Bitcoin SV approach is very simple: unbounded scaling. It should not be up to any protocol developer to limit the block capacity. It should be up to network and market forces. This is critical for achieving scaling.&nbsp;
This is something that the Ethereum network is still struggling with. In 2019, Vitalik Buterin acknowledged that the Ethereum blockchain was almost full. The efforts to deliver a theoretical 2.0 version are still lagging. On Bitcoin SV, however, through technical improvements and an understanding of how network scaling works &ndash; both in theory and in practice - we are constantly seeing world record-sized blocks being mined.&nbsp;
<h3>Massive Bitcoin SV blocks = minor transaction fees</h3>
In March 2021, <a href="https://bitcoinsv.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin SV</a> broke a world record by successfully mining a block nearly 20-times the size that could even be attempted by the next most efficient blockchain. The block was <a href="https://whatsonchain.com/block-height/678301" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over 638MB of large chunks of data</a>. No other blockchain network allows the use of transactions to upload large or complex data to the blockchain. We think the future is even bigger, with terabyte-sized blocks enabling Bitcoin SV to be the global data network for the future.&nbsp;
This also provides a practical advantage for developers through very low transaction fees - unlike the Ethereum network, which has had transaction fees, or gas fees, soar to over $30 per transaction, because of the limitless size of blocks on the Bitcoin SV network, transaction fees are low and more importantly, reliable, because of the unlimited capacity on each block. And because fees are predictable, developers and enterprises know how much transactions will cost when they are building applications.&nbsp;
The median transaction fee on Bitcoin SV has been less than 1/100th of $0.01 for over a year. We think those numbers will continue to go even lower as the Bitcoin SV network scales.&nbsp;
<h3>Bitcoin SV use cases</h3>
These low fees open up a whole new world of microtransactions, allowing users to do all kinds of amazing things on the Bitcoin SV network with large volumes of transactions that have very small fees attached to them.
Low transaction fees also enable a diverse array of business use cases that we are already seeing emerging on Bitcoin SV.
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The Bitcoin SV blockchain is being used for storing healthcare data, managing supply chains and powering a fairer world of online gaming and eSports. Casino and iGaming companies are using tokens built on Bitcoin SV to help replicate casino and iGaming funding capabilities. Social media, entertainment and media content is being managed on the blockchain. Identity management, big streams of big data feeds and Internet of Things devices are streaming data to the blockchain. Digital advertising and new products such as extended reality with augmented reality and virtual reality products are using the Bitcoin SV blockchain. And of course, financial services. All of this is possible due to Bitcoin SV&rsquo;s unbounded scaling and small transaction fees.&nbsp;
Our vision is a future where everything is not only capable of being online, but all kinds of data and activity can also be recorded and used on-chain. It's a future vision of a fully on-chain world that brings many new efficiencies and advantages.
<h2>Bitcoin Association developer resources and initiatives&nbsp;</h2>
Providing developers with the tools and opportunities to break into blockchain is one of the key undertakings of Bitcoin Association. You already know about Bitcoin SV DevCon that we started in 2020, but we've seen so much demand and interest across the world as people are learning and waking up to the power of Bitcoin and Bitcoin SV that we knew we needed to do more.&nbsp;
In 2020 we launched a <a href="http://wiki.bitcoinsv.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin SV Wiki</a> as the technical site for information about the Bitcoin SV Node software and technical infrastructure.&nbsp;
Though it is not run by the Bitcoin Association, <a href="http://bitcoinsvdevs.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BitcoinSVDevs.com</a> provides an index of developer resources, tools and libraries that is constantly updated by developers creating new applications on Bitcoin SV.
We have launched a series of Bitcoin SV educational webinars with our partners at nChain. In 2020, we ran a series in both English and Chinese. We will repeat the webinar series in 2021.
For those who like to compete, we host bi-annual <a href="https://bsvhackathon.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bitcoin SV Hackathon events</a>. Unlike some of our previous Hackathons, which happened over a two-day weekend period, our 2021 Hackathon will take place over six weeks, giving participants more time to work on their submissions. There is a prize pool of a total of $100,000 available for the top three finalists, to be paid out in BSV. You can <a href="https://bsvhackathon.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sign up for updates on our future Hackathons over here</a>.
We also launched the first module of our Bitcoin SV Academy developers stream in March 2021. Over time, it will be built into a comprehensive online education curriculum for developers that will lead to a developer certification programme. You can <a href="https://bitcoinsv.academy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sign up for the introductory Bitcoin development course over here</a>.
If you want to learn more about everything Bitcoin Association is doing, we invite you to become an affiliate. It is free to sign up and you can stay up to date on the events and activities we offer.&nbsp;
Our next big event will be the CoinGeek series of conferences, which highlight the business power of Bitcoin SV. Due to global restrictions, the event will be a hybrid between virtual and live, scheduled for June 8-10, 2021. Registrations are open, so head over to the <a href="https://coingeekconference.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CoinGeek Conference website</a> to sign up.

Ahead of Bitcoin SV developer week 2021, we want to tell you about the potential we see for developing on Bitcoin &amp; how Bitcoin SV enables these capabilities.