Bitcoin 2.0: Unleash The Sidechains
So. We’ve got Bitcoin and its blockchain; and we’ve got scores if not hundreds of other blockchains, powering various altcoins and Namecoin and (soon) Ethereum et al. But blockchains, like social networks, benefit from a network effect. The most popular becomes the most resilient, the most powerful, the most valuable; and Bitcoin’s blockchain is, by far, the big dog today. These two facts have provoked a certain amount of anti-altcoin vitriol.
Sidechains are new blockchains which are backed by Bitcoins, via Bitcoin contracts, just as dollars and pounds used to be backed by cold hard gold. You could in principle have thousands of sidechains “pegged” to Bitcoin, all with different characteristics and purposes … and all of them taking advantage of the scarcity and resilience guaranteed by the main Bitcoin blockchain, which in turn could iterate to implement experimental sidechain features once they have been tried and tested.
If sidechains take off, though — which will require some changes to the core Bitcoin protocol — this probably bodes ill for the existing altcoins.
Read the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/19/bitcoin-2-0-unleash-the-sidechains/?ncid=tcdaily