Why did Bitcoin miss the opportunity to develop an ecosystem?

A reader asked in the comment section:

The inscriptions were very popular back then; why did Bitcoin miss that opportunity?

This is a question that every participant who has been involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem needs to think about.

If many problems were unclear at the beginning, after witnessing the rise and fall of the Bitcoin ecosystem over the past few years, we should have a clearer understanding of some key issues.

I think there are several main reasons why Bitcoin missed the opportunity to develop its ecosystem:

The first is that the infrastructure of the Bitcoin ecosystem still has a considerable distance to support the massive ecosystem.

Let's take an example of a detail in the inscription ecosystem: the inscription assets have a very important infrastructure - a decentralized indexer.

On the surface, this indexing mechanism seems to be used only for retrieving inscription information, but in reality, it maintains the transactions, order, and outcomes of the entire inscription ecosystem.

At the peak of the inscription, I remember there were only about four indexers in the entire ecosystem. They were operated and maintained by four major exchanges and wallet companies. These four indexers are distributed indexers; they are somewhat like nodes, but they differ significantly from the blockchain nodes we imagine: they do not have a forced synchronization mechanism --- consensus mechanism.

This has led to certain security risks in the entire inscription ecosystem, with consensus not being strong enough.

This situation has not improved or strengthened over the years.

When the scale of the Bitcoin ecosystem is not large enough, this is not a problem; but once it reaches a certain scale, relying solely on four indexers without a consensus mechanism is likely to make it hard for people to be assured of the overall security and stability of the ecosystem.

This mechanism is still very immature in terms of decentralization and security, and it cannot withstand powerful external attacks at all.

This is just one case in the Bitcoin ecosystem infrastructure.

Cases like this are not uncommon in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Years have passed, and there has been no subsequent progress or improvement in these mechanisms so far.

This triggers the next reason.

Secondly, the Bitcoin ecosystem lacks a strong team that leads the technological development and evolution of the ecosystem.

Each team has its own set of solutions, and each solution is difficult to popularize and promote. It is hard for each solution to reach a consensus at the ecological level. The final result can only be a situation where everyone speaks for themselves and acts independently, and no one can bear fruit at the ecological level.

Without such a team, let alone developing the ecosystem, it is impossible to promote and improve important projects and technologies, such as the infrastructure that ensures ecological safety.

How does the Bitcoin ecosystem progress?

The third limitation is that the native technological architecture of Bitcoin and the CORE team responsible for managing node code improvements will hinder the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem into one that supports a Turing-complete environment.

The biggest limitation of Bitcoin's native technology architecture is that it is not Turing complete, which means it cannot execute complex code and operations. Without changes to this architecture, it is hard to imagine how it will adapt to the development of new technologies and applications in the future.

But on the other hand, the CORE team responsible for code updates has ingrained minimalism into their genes--------- this principle cannot be said to be right or wrong, only that this principle is contradictory to ecological development.

Let's first look at a negative example.

Take zero-knowledge proof (ZK) as an example.

Currently, Ethereum is actively promoting this technology.

We assume that this technology is a necessary requirement for future commercial applications. Therefore, this technology is essential for any layer of blockchain dedicated to developing an ecosystem. And this technology must be modified in the node code.

So, will this modification be approved by the CORE team?

The answer is: It is highly unlikely. They will reject such a large change.

Zero-knowledge proof is just an example.

What I want to express is that if Bitcoin really wants to develop its own ecosystem, there will be many major changes similar to zero-knowledge proofs, but many of these major changes may be rejected by the CORE team.

Let's take another positive example.

The inscription ecosystem has been around for over 2 years, from its emergence in 2023 to now, but it was only recently that the CORE team approved an update that better supports inscriptions to some extent.

But how many players are still participating in the inscriptions now?

At this point, how much difference does it make even if support for inscriptions has been passed?

The time window has been missed for too long.

Therefore, the technical architectural limitations of Bitcoin and the principles of the CORE team itself restrict the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem.