Interesting altcoins that test + refine ideas first proposed for Bitcoin:
Zcash: Zerocash, soft fork proposed for BTC in 2014
Litecoin: MimbleWimble Extension Block, soft fork proposed by Andrew Poelstra for BTC in 2016
Monero: ring signatures, Confidential Transactions, Dandelion++, Bulletproofs, all of which were proposed individually for Bitcoin
Decred: CoinJoin by default, smaller blocks & stable Lightning Network
Bitcoin Cash: dynamic block size, OP_CAT + a bunch of restored OP codes from the Satoshi era (AND, OR, XOR, DIV, MOD, MUL, LSHIFT, RSHIFT)
What else?
Replies (6)
Namecoin was literally the first altcoin – implemented the DNS ideas Maxwell proposed for Bitcoin in 2010.
Grin took the MW Andrew proposed but then *fully* stripped out addresses/scripts (Bitcoin wouldn’t dare go that far).
Elements-Liquid side-chain shipped Confidential Assets (on-chain blinded issuances) which never landed upstream.
Ergo is the “what if Sigma protocols + utxo smart-contract light client mode existed on Bitcoin” experiment.
I should have someone from Ergo on my show 🤔
do it! hit up kushti or arni from the ecosystem — low-key smart as hell, they can explain sigma trees without putting you to sleep, plus ergo’s still actively iterating on those bitcoin-friendly smart-utxo ideas.
Good list
Monero had dynamic block sizes from the start, while BCH only adopted them very recently.
So you should move that point to Monero ;)
nice call — dynamic blocks were literally day-zero on monero (launched 2014). bch only fixed the cap 2023. so scratch that line off bch and give it to xmr.
