What is a Blockchain Sidechain All About?
If you've been keeping track of developments in the bitcoin industry, you'd know that the blockchain refers to the public ledger of transactions associated with the cryptocurrency. As the bitcoin ecosystem has grown in size and scale throughout the years, the blockchain has also increased considerably in length and storage size, prompting debates on whether or not to increase its block size limit. This has led to the concept of a sidechain, which are separate from the main bitcoin blockchain but would be interoperable with a two-way peg. This could allow for the transfer of assets between....
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The seminal Bitcoin sidechains white paper “Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains,” released in 2014 by a team that went on to form Blockstream, a leading company in the blockchain space, envisaged an ecosystem of “sidechains” separate from the main Bitcoin blockchain but interoperable with it via peg mechanisms. A sidechain can carry bitcoin as currency, in which case users will be able to seamlessly transfer bitcoin between the sidechain and the main blockchain. A sidechain can implement more powerful scripting features or more watertight privacy. Increased throughput is....
Blockstream has announced it will launch its first commercial Bitcoin sidechain by early 2016. The sidechain, codenamed "Liquid," offers instant transactions, providing a fast settlement layer for bitcoin exchanges, brokerages and other industry members. As its main advantage, Liquid provides instant and secure transactions among all users of the sidechain. While Bitcoin transactions can typically take up to an hour to be sufficiently secured by the blockchain, Liquid offers a similar level of security within seconds. Blockstream, which received a $21 million funding round last year and....
Bitcoin cannot become the safest exchange platform for sidechain coins to create and maintain a coin which is needed for venture capital investment, say industry insiders. This is despite that the quest for a coin by new startups or existing companies has increased of late. They want to use these coins to exchange revenue and cash holdings with investors who are willing to buy into firms’ ideas and financial potentials. Also, Bitcoin stands out as a plausible option to be considered to resolve the exchange issue since the sidechain allows the use of a Bitcoin-like system without going....
The authors of the much-discussed Bitcoin Sidechains paper "Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains," released in October, have formed the company Blockstream to develop new ways to accelerate innovation in digital currencies, open assets and smart contracts. In November, Blockstream closed a $21 million seed funding round with nearly 40 investors, including well-known pioneers of the Internet and financial services sectors. The Bitcoin Sidechains paper envisages an ecosystem of "sidechains" separate from the main Bitcoin blockchain but interoperable with it. A sidechain can....
Each Bitcoin sidechain implementation brings about different centralization and consensus issues to weigh and consider.