Exploring the Nature and Future Development of Bitcoin System

The proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism designed by Satoshi Nakamoto truly solved an important consensus problem that has troubled humanity for a long time—the Byzantine Generals Problem. The core of this problem lies in: how to reach consensus among parties and form an orderly state in a chaotic and disordered environment through some mechanism? In other words, how to achieve consensus?

From a thermodynamic perspective, this is a process of entropy reduction, moving from disorder to order. The PoW mechanism achieves consistency by incentivizing miners to participate in a computational power competition to solve specific hash values, thereby establishing consensus among a group of originally chaotic and disordered nodes. This consensus mechanism is known as Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus.

PoW creates a continuously growing and expanding entropy-reducing system. In the universe, most things tend to increase in entropy, ultimately leading to heat death. However, life is an exception. Life forms order by absorbing negative entropy, achieving entropy reduction. From this perspective, the Bitcoin system is essentially a continuously growing organism that sustains its development by absorbing global computing power through mechanical consensus.

It is worth noting that Bitcoin (BTC) is merely the reward symbol driving the growth of this organism, and not the entirety of the system. The Bitcoin system not only has independence but also has sociality, allowing it to collaborate with other entities to generate greater value.

After 16 years of development, Bitcoin continues to grow, while many so-called blockchain projects that imitate Bitcoin have gradually declined. In contrast, after Ethereum switched to Proof of Stake (PoS), it abandoned the mechanism of promoting system evolution by absorbing global computing power, and instead relied on the ETH staking rate to create consensus. This mechanism has an upper limit, which may be one of the deeper reasons for Ethereum gradually falling behind Bitcoin.

These phenomena prompt us to rethink the essence of Bitcoin: how does this life form driven by mechanical consensus continue to exert its social value in human digital civilization? How can the Bitcoin system better integrate with human society to unleash greater life energy?

This may be a more meaningful exploration and entrepreneurial direction for the next stage in the field of cryptocurrency. By deeply understanding the life characteristics of the Bitcoin system, we can expand its application space and promote the further development of the digital economy.