A reader asked in the comments:

Back then, inscriptions were very popular. Why did Bitcoin miss that opportunity?

This is a question that every participant in the Bitcoin ecosystem needs to consider.

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

I believe Bitcoin missed the opportunity to develop its ecosystem for several reasons:

First, the infrastructure of the Bitcoin ecosystem is still quite far from supporting a large ecosystem.

Let's take a detail from the inscription ecosystem as an example: a very important piece of infrastructure for inscription assets is the decentralized indexer.

On the surface, this indexing mechanism is just used to retrieve inscription information, but in reality, it maintains the transactions, order, and results of the entire inscription ecosystem.

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

This leads to certain security risks in the entire inscription ecosystem, as the consensus is not strong enough.

This situation has not improved or strengthened over the years.

When the scale of the Bitcoin ecosystem was not large enough, this was not an issue; but once it grows to a certain scale, relying solely on four indexers without a consensus mechanism makes it hard to ensure the security and stability of the entire ecosystem.

This mechanism is still quite immature in terms of decentralization and security; it cannot withstand strong external attacks.

This is just one example from the infrastructure of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

There are many such cases in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Years have passed, and there has been no subsequent progress or improvement in these mechanisms.

This leads to the next reason.

Second, the Bitcoin ecosystem lacks a strong team to lead 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; achieving consensus at the ecosystem level is challenging. The final result can only be self-talk and individual governance, with no one able to flourish and bear fruit at the ecosystem level.

Without such a team, not to mention developing the ecosystem, even advancing and perfecting crucial projects and technologies for ensuring ecosystem security is impossible.

How can the Bitcoin ecosystem move forward?

The third reason is that the limitations of Bitcoin's native technological architecture and the CORE team, which manages node code improvements, will hinder the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem into one that supports Turing completeness.

The biggest limitation of Bitcoin's native technological architecture is that it is non-Turing complete, meaning it cannot execute complex code and operations. If this architecture is not changed, it is hard to imagine how it will adapt to the development of new technologies and applications in the future.

On the other hand, the CORE team responsible for code updates has minimalism ingrained in its DNA—this principle cannot be deemed right or wrong; it can only be said that this principle contradicts ecosystem development.

Let's look at a counterexample.

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

Currently, Ethereum is actively promoting this technology.

Let’s assume this technology is essential for future commercial applications. Then this technology is a necessity for any layer-1 blockchain dedicated to ecosystem development. And this technology must be modified in the node code.

Could this modification be approved by the CORE team?

The answer is: most likely not. They would reject such a significant change.

Zero-knowledge proofs are just one example.

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

Now let’s look at a positive example.

The inscription ecosystem has been around for over two years since its inception (in 2023), but only recently did the CORE team approve an update that better supports inscriptions to some extent.

But how many players are still participating in inscriptions now?

At this point, even if support for inscriptions is approved, how much impact will it have?

The time window has already been missed for too long.

Therefore, the limitations of Bitcoin's technological architecture and the principles of the CORE team inherently restrict the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

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