Since bitcoin seems to be having trouble gaining traction in the past months, Stanford professor David Mazieres claims that a better alternative exists. He says that this is faster and safer, which might make it more secure and flexible compared to bitcoin.
In a paper released earlier this week, Mazieres detailed how the system for this new digital currency could make payments more efficient than bitcoin transactions. As it is, the total value of bitcoin in existence is at $3.4 million.
Bitcoin and Its Competition
Bitcoin was introduced in 2008 by Japanese Satoshi Nakamoto who designed the digital currency’s set of rules and cryptographic principles based on the blockchain. This protocol was significant in showing that a set of parties who don’t necessarily trust each other can still be able to make transactions and keep a public ledger of the exchange.
However, this cryptocurrency has been subject to a lot of controversy, as the system hasn’t been completely immune from theft and hacking incidents. A number of bitcoin exchanges and companies have shut down in the previous year, resulting to a loss of funds from both the firms and its clients. Apart from that, the rampant use of bitcoin in illegal transactions or criminal activities has been a major cause of concern.
According to Mazieres’ new security protocol called SCP, the bitcoin-inspired system can be replaced with a newer one in order to take these weak spots into account. This has already been picked up by Stellar, which was modeled after the cryptocurrency created in Ripple Labs.
“Bitcoin is good, but we wanted to start from scratch and address some of these additional properties,” Mazieres mentioned. SCP also relies on people running software that communicates over the Internet but does not rely on mining to create the cryptocurrency. Mazieres will be taking a leave from Stanford four days a week in order to work on his bitcoin alternative.
