Get ready, get ready. Reading this might make you angry and confused, it might confuse you, you might even get angry enough to punch your screen (don't do that). Consider this a trigger warning.
bitcoin is a database. Period. That is what it is. The blockchain is a database for storing past updates so that the current state of that database, the UTXO set, can be reproduced. The entire bitcoin protocol is based on the database. What is a valid entry in that database and what is not a valid entry in the database? Who can propose entries to that database? How do you ensure that only input from those users will be considered and accepted? What is the authentication mechanism that restricts writing entries to this database? How do you speed up database entries so that people can't make so many that they overload or crash the software that manages the database? How do you ensure that people can't make single entries that are large enough to cause other denial of service issues?
It's about the database.
Work test? The purpose of this in the protocol is to manage who can actually process database updates. bitcoin is intended to be a decentralized system, so it needed a way to update the database in a decentralized way while still allowing users to reach consensus with all their individual copies of the database in a single update. . If everyone simply updates their own copy of the database themselves, there is no way for everyone to reach consensus on a single version of the database. If you rely on a few authority figures to handle updates, then the update process is not truly decentralized. This was the goal of POW, to allow anyone to process an update, but not without incurring a verifiable cost in doing so.
Proof of work is simply a decentralized mechanism for updating a database.
The entire peer-to-peer network architecture? It exists solely to propagate proposed database update entries (transactions) and completed database updates (blocks). Nodes that verify transactions when they enter their mempool? This is to pre-filter proposed entry updates in the database and ensure they are valid. Nodes that verify that a block meets the required difficulty target? It is to pre-filter a proposed database update and ensure it is valid before passing it to other nodes to update their local copy.
The peer-to-peer network exists solely to reconcile multiple copies of the same database.
bitcoin writing? It literally exists for the sole purpose of functioning as an authorization mechanism for database entries. To delete an existing entry in the database's current state, the UTXO set, a user proposing that update must provide proof of authentication that meets the conditions of the script that locks the existing database entry. Only existing entries, or UTXOs, can be “spent” to authorize the creation of new entries in the database. Miners are the only ones in the protocol who are allowed to create entries without meeting the condition of deleting an existing one by fulfilling the authorization requirements set in their blocking script.
The bitcoin script is simply a mechanism to control and restrict who can write to the database.
Every aspect of what bitcoin is revolves around the central core function of maintaining a database and ensuring that the many network participants who maintain their individual copies of that database remain in sync and agree on what the current state of the database is. database. All the properties that make bitcoin have value as a form of money or means of payment, they are literally derived from how it works as a database.
Many people in this space think that this database should only be used as a means of payment or a form of money, and I empathize with that opinion. I also believe that that is the most important use case and I believe that every effort should be made to scale that particular use case as much as possible without sacrificing the sovereignty and security of being able to interact directly with that database . .
But it's still just a database when boiled down to the objective reality of what bitcoin is. People who are willing to pay satoshis-denominated fees to write an entry that is considered valid by that database's rules can do so. There is nothing you can do to prevent them from changing what is considered a valid entry in that database, which involves convincing everyone else to also adopt a new set of rules regarding what is a valid entry.
People can freely compete within the consensus rules to write whatever they want to this database, as long as they pay the costs required by the rules and mining incentive structure to do so. Period. Are a lot of the things people can and are entering into the database stupid? Yes. Of course they are. The Internet is littered with overwhelming amounts of stupid stuff in isolated databases all over the place. Why is that? Because people are willing to pay the cost of putting stupid things in a database.
It is irrelevant whether the users of the database pay the provider and trade, or whether the operator itself allows certain things to be entered as part of the trades without passing the cost on to the user. This nonsense only exists somewhere in digital form because somehow you pay the cost of doing it.
bitcoin is not fundamentally different from any other database in that sense. The only difference is that there is no singular owner or guardian dictating what is allowed or not. Each owner of a copy of the bitcoin database is able to allow or disallow whatever he wants; The problem is that if they choose to reject something that everyone else considers acceptable, they lose consensus with everyone else. Your local database is no longer in sync with the global virtual database that everyone else follows and uses.
If you find that certain database entries are unacceptable, then change the rules by which your local copy validates the new entries. But that's cutting off your nose to mess up your face. At the end of the day, bitcoin is based on a simple axiom: pay to play. If people pay the fee, they can play. Is that how it works.
At the end of the day, it is entirely up to each individual what they want to allow or not allow in their database, but despite all the semantic and philosophical debates going on right now, one thing remains unquestionably and objectively true: bitcoin is a database.