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Bitcoin Liquid: All you need to know

Blockstream has come up with innovative Bitcoin sidechain techniques, in order to provide scalability to the Bitcoin network
Blockstream has come up with innovative Bitcoin sidechain techniques, in order to provide scalability to the Bitcoin network by Bitcoin Liquid

Shedding light on one of the most recent efforts to scale Bitcoin.

Scalability has been the evergreen issue of Bitcoin network

The scalability issue concerning Bitcoin has been a very tedious problem, for which no clear solutions were seeming to be practical enough to be implemented. But one of the blockchain based companies named, Blockstream has come up with an innovative Bitcoin sidechain techniques, to provide scalability to the Bitcoin network. Below are some of the critical attributes of that Liquid Bitcoin network.

1. The Liquid Bitcoin network went live on 27th September 2018. The information of which, was unveiled by the Chief Strategy Officer at Blockstream, Samson Mow.

2. The San Francisco-based blockchain giant, Blockstream has predominantly been in the LimeLight of the Crypto sphere for its consistent efforts in the development of Bitcoin Core.

3. It provides for anonymous transactions which means that the sender’s and receiver’s address is hidden from the entire network. As a side chain implementation, the system also increases the transaction confirmation speed and lowest the transaction fees.

4. The CEO of Blockstream, Adam Back also made it very clear that in future, the technology would enable the users to place orders and eliminate the need of exchanges to undertake transactions. According to him, this procedure would safeguard the interests and assets of the customers.

5. The Liquid Bitcoin network is supporting the mainstream Bitcoin network, by adopting the most popular Segregated Witness concept along with the two-layer micropayments, the Lightning network.

6. The company is also looking forward to their dedicated blockchain wallet, GreenAddress. However, plans are also under process to make the Liquid Bitcoin, support by the hardware wallets like Trezor or Ledger Nano S.

7. Many prominent blockchain-based institutions had participated in their mainnet launch, and some of the notable ones included Bitfinex, OKcoin, Unocoin, Crypto Garage, etc.

8. Apart from Bitcoin Liquid, it also supports Issued Token Asset feature, where the users can virtually use any asset, to trade them as tokens. The Asset can be anything ranging from Gold, Silver, Fiat currency, other tokens, reward points, etc.

9. The Bitcoin Liquid network, as a side chain implementation, would mark a great sigh of relief to the community members, as the Bitcoin network had been played with Scalability from a very long time.

10. According to experts, it has also been calculated that the emergence of Liquid Bitcoin network would disrupt many cryptocurrencies, as it has been inherently supported by many members behind the original Bitcoin protocol.

11. Many business corporations and cryptocurrency exchanges along with the regular users would greatly be benefited, as it would enhance the liquidity of Bitcoin in the market through its 1 to 1 pegged nature with Bitcoin.

12. Even though Bitcoin Liquid network is a Federation sidechain, it is not much centralized in character as the decisions concerning future advancements would be undertaken by the community members only. However, it cannot be as decentralized as the Bitcoin network is. Various Bitcoin exchanges make sure that the Liquid Bitcoin network servers are geographically distributed.

13. Bitcoin Liquid network provides the optimum speed which is very much essential in the current Bitcoin era, to the day traders.

14. Very similar to the open source implementations, Blockstream has even initiated Bitcoin community-based project, named, Elements, through which the community members assist in the development of the Bitcoin code.

15. Any particular user can join the Elements community, to develop a robust and reliable solution for the Bitcoin blockchain network. One can also enter their dedicated Slack channel.

Nevertheless, Bitcoin scalability has been one of the most talked about issues in the cryptocurrency domain as various supporters support to keep the block size constant and work on the Lightning Network or Segwit field. On the other hand, the remaining community members choose things the other way around. However, the experts also debate about the Of Chain blockchain implementations without incorporating Segwit.

How would the future of Bitcoin be?

However, any particular conjecture will have its own set of future consequences which must be kept in mind before undertaking any decision. However, the future of Bitcoin might lead towards a centralized economy, if better scalability implementations are put forth by the blockchain based companies. However, on an overall basis, the Bitcoin network is consistently improving which is a good sign.

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