There’s been a lot of talk recently about IPv6 and how the internet’s communication protocol could work with Bitcoin’s own protocol to make payments more secure, direct, and private. Integrating with IPv6 has been part of Bitcoin’s roadmap from the start.
IPv6 makes IP-to-IP transactions usable
In the 2008 white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto described IP-to-IP transactions as the primary way to send payments with Bitcoin. Using a public “Bitcoin address” (a hash of the private key) and broadcasting the transaction to the entire network was a secondary method in case one of the parties was offline at the time.
In late 2018, Dr. Craig Wright published a series of articles on the topic and detailed how IPv6 could finally make Bitcoin’s IP-to-IP transaction plan usable—and how Bitcoin could finally deliver the internet’s promise of payment functionality, built-in at a fundamental level.
The true purpose of Bitcoin’s IP-to-IP transactions is slowly becoming apparent and BSV’s massive data processing capability and scalability, plus its new SPV frameworks (e.g., the LiteClient Toolbox) now make this possible.
More unique addresses and built-in security
IPv6 has two big advantages here over IPv4. Though IPv6 has existed for decades, much of the internet still uses the old communication protocol, IPv4.
IPv6’s first advantage: instead of 4 billion unique addresses, IPv6 allows for near-infinite addresses. 2-4 billion IP addresses don’t even cover the world’s population, let alone the tens of billions of additional devices that interact.
People and devices can’t communicate (or transact) directly with each other through IPv4 because they have to share addresses, usually via NAT (network address translation) that uses modified headers to identify them. IPv6 would give every device and person on Earth a unique address and even allow billions of new/alternate ones. This makes them able to identify each other. Additionally, hackers would no longer be able to hunt out security holes by scanning every IP address since there’d simply be too many.
IPv6 also has built-in encryption and security: IPv6 makes IPSec (Internet Protocol Security) mandatory, along with all its encryption code, and has endpoint authentication.
This makes it possible for automated machines to negotiate security and communicate with each other, and even control machines without knowing where they’re located.
The BSV blockchain provides the bedrock for making all this possible because its scales to handle vast amounts of data and, crucially, does so at a minimal transaction fee rate (around 1/50th of a cent).
Secondly, it requires something like Bitcoin’s Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) to make transactions fast to process and reliable, even if one party is offline.
In addition, the blockchain network requires a solid framework to make SPV processes easy for any developer to build into their apps—to handle authentication and messaging. The LiteClient Toolbox allows developers to integrate SPV into their applications.
All this means Bitcoin becomes a network of actual users, not a network of nodes and miners. Those users can have extra confidence their data is secure and remains their own, rather than “trusting” it to social networks and other corporations.
Currently, China leads with 692 M IPv6 users 1) followed by India with 370 M v6 users, Europe with 143 M , the US with 115 M and Brazil with 69 M.
The BSV Global Blockchain Convention presentation, IPv6-bsed 5G/6G, IoT & Blockchain.
