Prepare, brace your self. Studying this may enrage and confound you, it’d confuse you, you may even get mad sufficient to punch your display (don’t do this.) Think about this a set off warning.
Bitcoin is a database. Interval. That’s what it’s. The blockchain is a database for storing previous updates to have the ability to reproduce the present state of that database, the UTXO set. All the Bitcoin protocol is constructed round the database. What’s a legitimate entry in that database, and what’s not a legitimate database entry? Who’s allowed to suggest entries to that database, how do you make sure that solely these customers’ entries shall be thought of and accepted? What’s the authentication mechanism proscribing writing entries to this database? How do you throttle database entries so that individuals can’t make so many it overloads or crashes the software program managing the database? How do you make sure that individuals can’t make single entries which can be giant sufficient to trigger different denial of service considerations?
It’s all in regards to the database.
Proof-of-work? All the function of that within the protocol is to handle who can really course of updates to the database. Bitcoin is supposed to be a decentralized system, so it wanted a method for the database to be up to date in a decentralized method whereas nonetheless permitting customers to return to consensus with all their particular person copies of the database on a single replace to it. If everyone seems to be simply updating their very own copy of the database by themselves, there is no such thing as a method everybody will come to consensus on a single model of the database. When you rely upon some authority figures to deal with updates, then the replace course of will not be actually decentralized. This was the purpose of POW, to permit anybody to course of an replace, however not with out incurring a verifiable value in doing so.
Proof-of-work is just a decentralized mechanism for updating a database.
All the peer-to-peer community structure? It exists solely to propagate proposed database replace entries (transactions), and finalized database updates (blocks). Nodes verifying transactions as they enter their mempool? It’s to pre-filter proposed entry updates to the database and guarantee they’re legitimate. Nodes verifying {that a} block meets the required problem goal? It’s to pre-filter a proposed database replace and guarantee it is legitimate earlier than passing it on to different nodes to replace their native copy.
The peer-to-peer community exists purely to reconcile a number of copies of the identical database.
Bitcoin script? It actually exists for the only function of functioning as an authorization mechanism for entries within the database. In an effort to delete an present entry within the present database state, the UTXO set, a person proposing that replace should present authentication proof assembly the situations of the script locking the present database entry. Solely present entries, or UTXOs, could be “spent” with a purpose to authorize the creation of latest entries into the database. Miners are the one ones within the protocol allowed to create entries with out assembly the situation of eradicating an present one by assembly the authorization necessities set out in it’s locking script.
Bitcoin script is just a mechanism to regulate and prohibit who can write to the database.
Each single side of what Bitcoin is revolves across the core central operate of sustaining a database, and guaranteeing that many community individuals all retaining their particular person copies of that database stay in sync and agree on what the present state of the database is. The entire properties that make Bitcoin worth as a type of cash, or a way of fee, are actually derived from the way it features as a database.
Many individuals on this house assume that this database ought to be used solely for a way of fee, or a type of cash, and I empathize with that view. I too assume that’s a very powerful use case for it, and I believe that each effort ought to be taken with a purpose to scale that individual use case as a lot as potential with out sacrificing the sovereignty and safety of having the ability to immediately work together with that database your self.
However it’s nonetheless only a database once you boil all the way down to the target actuality of what Bitcoin is. Individuals keen to pay the prices denominated in satoshis to jot down an entry that’s thought of legitimate beneath the foundations of that database can accomplish that. There may be nothing you are able to do with a purpose to cease them in need of altering what is taken into account a legitimate entry in that database, which entails convincing everybody else to additionally undertake a brand new ruleset concerning what’s a legitimate entry.
Individuals can freely compete inside the consensus guidelines to jot down no matter they wish to this database, so long as they pay the prices required of the foundations and incentive construction of mining to take action. Interval. Are most of the issues individuals can and are getting into into the database silly? Sure. After all they’re. The web is plagued by thoughts numbing quantities of silly issues in siloed databases in all places. Why is that? As a result of individuals are keen to pay the fee to place silly issues in a database.
Whether or not that’s customers of the database paying the supplier and working, or the operator themselves permitting sure issues to be entered as a part of operations with out passing the fee to a person, is irrelevant. These silly issues solely exist someplace in digital type as a result of in a roundabout way, the fee is paid to take action.
Bitcoin is basically no completely different from every other database in that regard. The one distinction is that there is no such thing as a singular proprietor or gatekeeper dictating what’s allowed or not. Each proprietor of a duplicate of the Bitcoin database is able to permitting or not permitting no matter they need; the issue is that if they select to refuse one thing that everybody else finds acceptable, they fall out of consensus with everybody else. Their native database is not in sync with the worldwide digital database that everybody else is following and utilizing.
When you discover sure database entries unacceptable, then by all means change the foundations your native copy validates new entries in opposition to. However that’s slicing off your nostril to spite your face. On the finish of the day Bitcoin runs on one easy axiom: pay to play. If individuals pay the payment, they get to play. That’s simply the way it works.
On the finish of the day, it’s totally as much as each particular person what they wish to permit or not permit of their database, however slicing by way of all of the semantics and philosophical debates occurring proper now one factor stays unquestionably and objectively true: Bitcoin is a database.
