Overview
All Bitcoin sidechain two-way pegs at present are federated by necessity. Drivechain (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 300 and 301) would change that by introducing advanced Bitcoin sidechains (“drivechains”) that feature peer-to-peer two-way pegs.
From a social perspective, drivechains may become Bitcoin’s exciting “final frontier” for innovation, creativity, and technological inclusiveness, ensuring that Bitcoin development never stops growing to serve humanity’s manifold demands with respect to blockchain technology.
In economic terms, the introduction of drivechains may lead to substantially higher value accrual to Bitcoin and its blockspace, which in turn would help maintain Bitcoin’s status as the cryptocurrency offering unsurpassed network effect and economic security.
Drivechain May Increase Bitcoin Dominance
Drivechains by design would serve as partitioned environments on Bitcoin for innovative technologies such as large blocks, peer-to-peer oracles, strong fungibility, and greater Turing completeness. The availability of drivechains could induce a migration of developers and users to Bitcoin, catalyzing substantial value accrual to Bitcoin and expanding its network effect. Moreover, the availability of drivechains would deprive altcoin founders and promoters of the rationale “it’s hard or impossible to build on Bitcoin”.
Drivechain May Increase Bitcoin Miner Revenue
Bitcoin in its current form arguably exhibits a problematic trend of low total transaction fee rate. As a result, criticism of the long-term fee-reliant economic security model of Bitcoin in its current form is not entirely without merit. However, if Drivechain adoption induces growth of the trajectory of Bitcoin miner revenue by fostering substantially higher transaction fees from merged mined sidechains, such criticism may become wholly untenable. This vision resonates with Satoshi’s words, “all networks in the world would share combined CPU power, increasing the total strength.”
How to Learn More
Explore the Drivechain project website: drivechain.info
Read Fiatjaf’s essay: fiatjaf.com/drivechain.html
Join the Drivechain Talk group on Telegram: t.me/DcInsiders
Read Super Testnet’s essay: stacker.news/items/127974
Visit the GitHub repository: github.com/LayerTwo-Labs
Read John Light’s post 1: lightco.in/2021/06/21/miners-can-steal
Read John Light’s post 2: https://lightco.in/2022/06/15/miners-can-steal-2
Read this website: drivechain.xyz
Watch videos: youtube.com/@LayerTwoLabs
The author of this post is an employee of LayerTwo Labs, Inc., a software development firm focused on designing and introducing peer-to-peer sidechains. This post represents the author’s personal views and not necessarily the views of the company or any other person.