On March 16–17, 2024, the sCrypt hackathon took place at the historic Fairmont, San Francisco. Organised by Xiaohui Liu, Founder and CEO of sCrypt, the sCrypt team, Ty Everett, Project Babbage, and sponsored by the BSV Blockchain, the event served as a platform for innovators and enthusiasts to delve into the intricacies of BSV blockchain development.
Thomas Giacomo (Utilisation Director for BSV Blockchain) gave a presentation with the title ‘BSV blockchain: the chain, ecosystem, association and tools’. The talk provides an overview of the BSV blockchain ecosystem, focusing on its development, sustainability, scalability, security, regulatory compliance, and enterprise adoption. Furthermore, it highlights the BSV Blockchain’s efforts in open-source governance and programs, protocol stewardship, standardisation, education, growth & ecosystem and public & private sector outreach.
An overview of BSV blockchain’s features and capabilities
Giacomo started his talk by highlighting the distinctive features of the BSV blockchain. He discussed the sustainability of the blockchain’s consensus mechanism and introduced the BSV Blockchain’s new network topology for scalability. The goal is to achieve 1 million transactions per second by year-end, with Teranode. He mentioned ongoing tests at 1 Million transactions per second toward this objective. He explained the importance of SPV – as outlined in the section 8 of the Bitcoin white paper and overlay services for scaling and compliance with regulatory frameworks for adoption, especially regarding discussions with central banks or public institutions.
The blockchain’s sustainable transaction processing model, without a block size cap, enables handling an unlimited number of transactions with minimal energy consumption per kilobyte, positioning BSV as the most sustainable blockchain. Giacomo underscored the concept of sustainable transaction processing, combining security and sustainability, as a key benefit of the chain.
Protocol stability and regulatory compliance
Another outstanding feature of the BSV blockchain is its security and stability, which is because no protocol changes will be made. He paralleled this protocol stability with the TCP/IP protocol’s role in Web2, which provides a solid foundation for development and business without disruption. Furthermore, he highlighted “layer two” capabilities at the layer one level of the BSV blockchain, which will be achieved with the overlay networks.
Giacomo emphasised the regulatory compliance of the BSV network, highlighting the absence of ICOs and the release of the Network Access Rules aligned with the white paper. These fix rules ensure legal adherence and aid in regulatory compliance to consider BSV as a commodity aligned with different international requirements such as the Howey test. The digital asset recovery mechanism for lost or stolen assets, enforced with court orders also attracts institutional players like retail and central banks as well as governments.
Ecosystem of BSV
Giacomo discussed the growth of the BSV ecosystem, with over 400 vendors and 160 applications. He presented some examples like Tokenovate’s smart contract capabilities in financial derivatives and Centi’s retail CBDC with a Swiss bank, demonstrating adoption potential. He emphasised the BSV Blockchain’s strategy of supporting both enterprises and “degen” initiatives (called as such during the event), fostering innovation and creation within the ecosystem.
Giacomo underscored the compatibility of these two approaches, indicating that these goals are complementary, not exclusive. Giacomo also mentioned collaborations with various renowned consulting firms and academic institutions to ensure the recognition of BSV Blockchain as a credible blockchain vendor through the overall Web3 mapping. This ongoing mapping exercise aims at traditional Web2 stakeholders including application builders and service providers to facilitate the BSV adoption by large enterprises.
Role of the BSV Blockchain
The main role of the BSV Blockchain is to act as the open-source body of the BSV network. Giacomo likened this to the IEEE for network protocols or the Linux Foundation for operating systems. The association establishes open-source guidelines and governance for core infrastructure components and developer tools following existing industry standards (ISO, W3C, IEEE, IPV6, etc.) and BSV standards discussed by the community through the Bitcoin Request for Comments (BRC) and elevated as BSV standards by the Technical Standards Committee. Another role is to be stewards of the protocol, protecting the blockchain for example through the Network Access Rules to maintain protocol stability.
Additionally, they serve as a platform for companies to engage with governments, central banks, and international organisations to develop blockchain-based solutions. Discussions revolve around use cases like blockchain-based digital identity and compliance with international standards like W3C and ISO 200-22 for international payment systems.
These efforts align with the BSV Blockchain’s strategic pillars: open-source programs, protocol stewardship, standardisation, education & research, growth & ecosystem and public and private sector outreach. Their overarching goal is to advance the best technology collaboratively with ecosystem partners, fostering scalability and interoperability with existing systems.
Roadmap for 2024
Giacomo outlined the roadmap for the year, focusing on transitioning the network to its new topology with Teranode, overlay networks, and SPV implementation at its edge. BSV Blockchain aims to scale to 1 million transactions per second by the end of the year including its different infrastructure components, with larger goals in subsequent years. The roadmap includes standardising BSV libraries, sponsoring educational events, providing executive blockchain programs, and obtaining ISO certification for the BSV Blockchain to improve its credibility as a neutral open-source body.
The goals for 2024 include clarifying open-source governance, expanding developer education, aligning with international standards bodies. The launch of a system integration certification program to professionalise the ecosystem is currently being discussed and planned for next year.
Improving developer journey and enterprise adoption
To conclude his talk, Giacomo discussed how the evolving infrastructure of BSV Blockchain, including Teranode, the overlay networks, and its SPV implementation through the BSV wallet reference implementation “SPV Wallet” are changing the BSV ecosystem. A major focus is on improving the developer experience.
Giacomo introduced ARC as a successor to mAPI, enabling application builders to transmit transactions directly peer-to-peer across the network, offering enhanced transaction stage granularity. ARC is currently in version 1.0 and accessible in open-source through GitHub or node’s endpoints. Giacomo also highlighted an ongoing initiative to standardise BSV libraries, starting with TypeScript which has been delivered, followed by Golang and Python. The choice of these libraries is following a survey sent to the BSV ecosystem with a large participation.
Furthermore, Giacomo announced the recent launch of the private beta for the SPV wallet, the standardised BSV Wallet reference implementation. It has been released in exclusivity to sCrypt hackathon participants for testing and feedback. The BSV wallet reference implementation is designed to lower costs for wallet providers, application developers, and exchanges. Regarding exchanges, Giacomo advocates for a shift towards regulated exchanges running their instance of the SPV wallet instead of running their own node. It will substantially reduce their operational expenses while improving their security. This strategic move aims to boost liquidity for application builders on the BSV blockchain willing to solve real world problems leveraging its utility.
