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I wonder if Bitcoin could ever migrate to Ethereum technology/proof of stake? It seems like a good idea but the Bitcoin community seems very resistant to change

I wonder if Bitcoin could ever migrate to Ethereum technology/proof of stake? It seems like a good idea but the Bitcoin community seems very resistant to change (see block size debate).

wmf 6y ago
Bitcoin will never change. In the future we'll probably see large amounts of BTC wrapped on Ethereum/Avalanche for DeFi trading.
- thebean11 6y ago
  Bitcoin has undergone pretty massive updates in the last few years. Proof of stake doesn't seem that far fetched honestly.
  - cesarb 6y ago
    AFAIK, none of the Bitcoin updates in the last few years is a "hard fork", that is, old nodes can still process valid blocks made by new nodes (though they might accept blocks which new nodes would reject). Changing from proof of work to proof of stake would require a hard fork.
- suikadayo 6y ago
  We’re already seeing more wrapped BTC on Ethereum, than there is BTC on Lightning, so that’s very telling.
  - wmf 6y ago
    That makes sense; people want to hodl or trade, not spend.
iwubu99 6y ago
Yup, proof of stake is the simple solution to this. BTC community won't be able to justify it eventually. Unless we get free energy in the mean time lol
gwillen 6y ago
Ethereum hasn't even migrated to "Ethereum technology". They have been claiming for years that they are planning to move from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. Maybe someday they will. My take on this: I remain unconvinced that any form of Proof of Stake can give the same security properties we easily get from Proof of Work. I won't say never, but getting Bitcoin to move would take a very convincing argument about the viability of PoS, and so far that's not happening. (Especially given that the poster child for PoS does not actually _use_ PoS yet, they just keep promising it "soon".)
- suikadayo 6y ago
  Eth2 with PoS is already running with Phase 0 on mainnnet though. https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/ The merge from Eth1 to Eth2 is expected to happen this year or after. There shouldn’t be any significant delays now because Phase 0 was the biggest hurdle with research and technical dependencies that didn’t exist yet, like BLS signatures. There’s no way Bitcoin will move to PoS without another contentious fork.

I wonder if Bitcoin could ever migrate to Ethereum technology/proof of stake? It seems like a good idea but the Bitcoin community seems very resistant to change (see block size debate).

wmf 6y ago

Bitcoin will never change. In the future we'll probably see large amounts of BTC wrapped on Ethereum/Avalanche for DeFi trading.

thebean11 6y ago
Bitcoin has undergone pretty massive updates in the last few years. Proof of stake doesn't seem that far fetched honestly.
- cesarb 6y ago
  AFAIK, none of the Bitcoin updates in the last few years is a "hard fork", that is, old nodes can still process valid blocks made by new nodes (though they might accept blocks which new nodes would reject). Changing from proof of work to proof of stake would require a hard fork.
suikadayo 6y ago
We’re already seeing more wrapped BTC on Ethereum, than there is BTC on Lightning, so that’s very telling.
- wmf 6y ago
  That makes sense; people want to hodl or trade, not spend.

iwubu99 6y ago

Yup, proof of stake is the simple solution to this. BTC community won't be able to justify it eventually. Unless we get free energy in the mean time lol

gwillen 6y ago

Ethereum hasn't even migrated to "Ethereum technology". They have been claiming for years that they are planning to move from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. Maybe someday they will. My take on this: I remain unconvinced that any form of Proof of Stake can give the same security properties we easily get from Proof of Work. I won't say never, but getting Bitcoin to move would take a very convincing argument about the viability of PoS, and so far that's not happening. (Especially given that the poster child for PoS does not actually _use_ PoS yet, they just keep promising it "soon".)

suikadayo 6y ago
Eth2 with PoS is already running with Phase 0 on mainnnet though. https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/ The merge from Eth1 to Eth2 is expected to happen this year or after. There shouldn’t be any significant delays now because Phase 0 was the biggest hurdle with research and technical dependencies that didn’t exist yet, like BLS signatures. There’s no way Bitcoin will move to PoS without another contentious fork.