BSV vs Ethereum and others - differences that matter for developers and businesses

While Ethereum is a popular choice among developers, those building enterprise-scale solutions on the platform all eventually find themselves at the roadblock of scaling. Scaling problems and high transaction fees restrict the usability of Ethereum, EOS and other ledger systems, while consensus models create other difficulties.

By taking heed of the considerations that have led other blockchain entrepreneurs to migrate from other blockchains to BSV, developers can save themselves the time and trouble of launching their project on an unsuitable platform.

From Ethereum to the BSV blockchain

David Case, creator of CryptoFights (Kronoverse platform)

‘BSV is our only choice at this point. It solves all sorts of other problems, has built all sorts of other tooling, lets us rely on the commodity blockchain so we don't have to worry about how to solve the consensus aspects. But mostly, the scalability and the cheap transactions makes it our only choice.’ David Case: Building games for the Bitcoin blockchain

In 2019, Crypto Traders spoke to David Case, lead architect of CryptoFights; a turn-based mobile game where all of the gameplay is recorded to the blockchain and both the ownership and history of your weapons and items are provable with Bitcoin forever.

Case’s history with Bitcoin, developing on Ethereum and why he decided to switch his project to BSV

‘Obviously, BTC had made it such that Bitcoin was just not a development platform,’ Case says, remembering his first impressions in the crypto space. ‘And in the Ethereum world, the mindset wasn’t different from normal software development where you look at the tools you have, the framework you need to work in, and the capabilities available to you.’

At this point he considered Bitcoin Cash the best blockchain implementation. The hash war piqued his interest in BSV.

‘As I tuned into some of the BSV livestreams, I started understanding the concept of a commodity ledger and realised it provided all the pieces that we were having to engineer some really complicated pieces for.’

‘I could just use what’s there and I don't have to worry about the consensus mechanism or coming up with a new proof-of-stake, proof-of-authority or an algorithm that says this is how this finalisation works and this is the trust mechanism around there.’

When 'the restoration of OP_RETURN’ occurred, Case had reached a definitive turning point. 'It helped me realise that I can store whatever I want out there, and that opened up the floodgates for what we're doing.’

That’s not to say that Ethereum doesn't work, says Case. ‘In Ethereum the core idea is that anything you transfer or any transaction you make has to get mined right away. There isn't really a concept that says I can sign a transaction and pass it off and you can do something with it later.’

While Ethereum takes a much broader approach by tackling a lot more issues, it can hem developers in.

‘BSV, on the other hand, is more of a foundational or a networking layer that just happens to have financials built into it. This opens the world up so that you can really do anything.’

The benefits of building on the BSV blockchain

‘The huge and immediate wins are removing barriers to entry, and tied to that is cost,’ Case explains. ‘With EOS, you've got to stake a significant amount of tokens to be able to do anything. That's a huge bummer. And once you try to onboard users and encourage them to play, they have to get the currency which is another barrier.’

BSV offers all sorts of alternatives, like businesses paying for users’ transactions so they don't have to, or funding user accounts with micropayments to onboard them.

’It's cheap enough that we can actually finance playing and still get all the benefits of things being recorded on the blockchain.’

Why developers and businesses choose the BSV blockchain over of all other blockchains

On the first day of the CoinGeek conference in New York, a panel discussed the topic of “BSV vs other blockchains: differences that matter for developers and businesses’. Here’s what the participants had to say.

Kevin Healy, independent app developer and investor

Kevin Healy has been active in the Ethereum community for a long time. Nowadays he’s working with the BSV blockchain instead, basing his decision on BSV’s stable protocol and low transaction fees.

Healy’s ambition is to create systems that deliver high quality fruit anywhere in the world in any season. He views the blockchain as technology that can make fruit production more efficient and improve the quality of produce with dozens of use cases, from providing farmers and merchants with blockchain tools to supply chain improvements.

Starting out, Healy used the Ethereum blockchain to program money and create smart contracts, but it didn't scale and transaction fees were too high. And so he switched over to BSV.

‘If I am going to build something that I want to be durable and long-lasting, I don’t want the protocol to be changed all the time. The low transaction fees are also essential so we can do micropayments and that sort of thing.’

From Hyperledger to the BSV blockchain

Peter Bainbridge-Clayton, founder and CTO of Kompany

Hyperledger is a well-known example of an enterprise system that is aiming to implement ‘blockchain without economy’. Peter Bainbridge-Clayton has worked with Hyperledger in the past, but has started to move away from the model to work on the BSV blockchain instead.

Bainbridge-Clayton believes incentives to be the key element of a blockchain.

‘With a public chain you have to incentivise the public, otherwise it is not a public chain. If you don't incentivise, no one is going to pay the electricity bill for free just to keep your chain happy. And so if you want to be doing lots and lots of transactions, which ours should be able to do because it's based on API calls, then you need that scalability. And I think that's where the crucial aspect actually lies,' he says.

Despite BSV’s superior incentive scheme, Kompany has not abandoned Hyperledger, explaining: ‘We are talking to potential customers who, for whatever reason, prefer things like the mission chains like Hyperledger. Most of those reasons are debatable at best, and some are just downright wrong. But again, you know, we're not going to turn down their business purely because they are under some misapprehension about the relative difference between permissioned and permissionless blockchains.'

From EOS and Bitcoin Cash to the BSV blockchain

Rohan Sharan, product manager of BlockReview

Like David Case, Rohan Sharan sees the difference between proof-of-stake and proof-of-work blockchains as a crucial point in favour of BSV. For him, it is clear that proof-of-work is a free market-driven force that incentivises users, developers and businesses, while proof-of-stake ends up in oligarchies.

Sharan’s first encounter with Bitcoin was when he won prize money at hackathons. Participating in a college hackathon, he was tasked with building a decentralised app. It was the first time he encountered blockchain's smart contract feature, but he found it very problematic so he started comparing blockchain projects including EOS and Bitcoin Cash for usability.

'I realised that proof-of-stake is inferior to proof-of-work, and it's simply a marketplace to produce and consume negative space. And then I realised that we can have the whole vision of the Internet on BSV as it's proven it can scale. I'm very passionate about building the whole Internet that is not advertising-based.'

This article was posted with permission from BSV Devcon.
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