Existing blockchain systems

Bitcoin The pioneering blockchain platform, Bitcoin, was created by an anonymous person or group of people under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, who first introduced it in a white paper in 2008[14] and launched the Bitcoin network in 2009. It uses a consensus mechanism known as Proof of Work (PoW) to validate transactions and create new blocks. Bitcoin’s PoW relies heavily on computational power. The base transaction layer in Bitcoin does not support complex smart contracts, as seen in Ethereum or Sui. Instead, it primarily focuses on the transfer of Bitcoin, the native digital currency, between “addresses.” The simplicity of Bitcoin’s scripting language ensures a high level of security, but limits the scope of transactions to sending funds or basic conditions such as time-locked or escrow transactions and multi-signature wallets. Blocks in the Bitcoin blockchain are created approximately every 10 minutes. Each block includes a collection of transactions, and once a block is added to the blockchain, the transactions within it are considered confirmed. Users of the Bitcoin network generally consider a transaction to be sufficiently “final” after six confirmations, or roughly one hour. As for scalability, Bitcoin has a theoretical throughput limit of around 7 transactions per second with its base layer, which is much lower than that of newer blockchain systems. To address this, “layer 2” solutions such as the Lightning Network[4] have been developed to handle smaller and more frequent off-chain transactions, thus freeing up the main Bitcoin blockchain for larger and more important transactions. Unlike Sui and Keeta, Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism does not rely on authorities or validators for transaction ordering and confirmation. Instead, it relies on decentralized miners who participate voluntarily and are incentivized by block rewards and transaction fees. Moreover, Bitcoin’s architecture is intentionally designed to be minimalistic and focused, which contributes to its robust security, but also limits its flexibility and scalability. Over the years, various forks and updates have attempted to address these limitations, but the core protocol remains largely unchanged.