How Does The Social Layer Become Key To Bitcoin’s Security

The Current Stage Of Bitcoin Security

In the second half of 2018, a funny thing happened while the people active in crypto looked around to realize there weren’t very many of us as friends convinced during the last holiday season no longer spoke to us and stopped checking the Coinbase accounts. In this way, the tide had gone out from the beach as tokens and blockchain were supposed to be changing the world and how come nobody was using them? 

Still, nobody is using them as many crypto projects have succeeded admirably with the cryptocurrency’s appeal being understood as freedom from human fallibility with no central banker playing politics with the money supply. While there is still no lawyer, to oversee the contract, it feels like those crypto developers have adopted the defense mechanism of the skink. The way is working out in succeeding at keeping people away.

Now there is more emphasis on the need for human users which is the so-called social layer of Bitcoin and other crypto networks with the human component is still regarded as the weakest link. For those who are engaged in building crypto networks, the how is it attracts the right users with a question that should come before how to defend against attackers. This is in contrast to what is popularly heard on Twitter while evaluating a crypto network, the demographics, and ideologies of the users that matter. With the ultimate line of defense, the ultimate decision-maker is on direction and narrative.

What Ethereum Got Right

Ever since the DAO collapsed, no one in crypto was allowed to say code is the law with a straight face, as the decentralized venture fund boldly claimed to have pure governance through code imploded as someone found a loophole. While it is Ethereum, a crypto protocol on which the DAO was built, it is seen to erase this fiasco with a hard fork walking back the ledger of transactions to the moment before disaster struck. While the dissenters where from this social layer intervention being kept going, on the ethereum’s original unforked protocol calling it Ethereum Classic.

To explain further, the current enthusiasm for narratives that have been describing bitcoin’s social layer resiliency there’s irony as the story goes in an event of a security failure the community of Bitcoin developers, investors, miners, and users are ultimately layer of defense. With bitcoin’s community comes the option to fork the protocol while porting the investment of time, capital and computing power onto the new version of Bitcoin. It is the collective commitment to a trust minimized monetary system making Bitcoin strong.

According to this narrative, trust in the people making up the crowd, where Bitcoin developers maintain Bitcoin network dominant client software with exerted influence shaping bitcoin’s road map and the story of the use cases. While it is the flavor of minimal trust, Ethereum has a public-facing leadership group whose word is widely imbibed. In this model, the social layer abides as they forked away from the DAO, Ethereum’s leaders had to convince the community to tag along.

How Do You Protect Bitcoin’s Codebase?

As recently Bitcoin core developers patched and disclosed a vulnerability it would enable an attacker crashing the network. As this vulnerability originated, it sat there for 18months until being discovered. With no doubt that the Bitcoin Core is sure to attract some of the best and brightest developers in the world, it is fallible as importantly some are pseudonymous. The questions relevant are could a state actor work pseudonymously producing code good enough to be accepted into the Bitcoin protocol? When slipping in another vulnerability undetected, could he or she explain later exploitation? While it is undoubtedly yes, the possibility is that it would be naive to believe otherwise.  

Even after exploiting such a weakness why is the government yet attempted to take down Bitcoin and could the governments as well as powerful potential attackers in case not friendly but at least tolerant towards bitcoins continued growth? Is that narrative even real where the strong narrative in Bitcoin culture of crypto persisting against hostility?

The Social Layer Is Key To Crypto Success

Regarding Bitcoin, some argue that sexism and racism don’t matter whereas the truth is that they do as Bitcoin holders think carefully about the recommended books and the words written and spoken. Your network is vulnerable if your social layer is full of assholes as all hacks are not technical with societies that can be hacked with bad or unsecured ideas. 

It is said that not all white papers come elegantly as Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper. While it was presented as running over 50 pages as also dedicating lengthy sections, together with imaging potential attacks as to how the network’s internal crypto-economic system of incentives and penalties render them bootless.

The Final Words To Wind Up The Discussion

The question cryptocurrency developers may be forgetting to ask is why anyone would want to enter this forbidding fortress let alone attack it? Who is supposed to enter bearing talents, ETH or gold? It isn’t yak shaving as focusing on the user with the user being the ultimate security defense. It is not being stated that security should come as an afterthought but in the network, it has to be built in bringing people in rather than shutting them out.