Nakamoto’s successors on the Bitcoin project, along with the developers of rival cryptocurrencies, are working to solve these problems, but in ways that sometimes radically diverge from the original white paper. The Bitcoin project is considering an innovation called the Lighting Network that would speed up transactions by moving most transactions outside of the blockchain. Sirer, meanwhile, is working on new protocols that address both speed and environmental impact. Others have created new cryptocurrencies that try to address a whole host of Bitcoin issues, from performance to privacy.

"Technically, Satoshi has been outclassed in every imaginable way," Sirer says. "And for the issues we still face, [Satoshi’s writing] provides no solution."

That led Sirer to declare on Twitter in June that "Satoshi is dead." Sirer didn’t mean that literally, but in the sense that Nietzsche wrote that "God is dead": Even Satoshi wouldn’t be able to resolve the sorts of disputes the cryptocurrency community now faces.

Jonathan Sidego, an executive at the hedge fund Numerai agrees with Sirer that Nakamoto’s paper has little guidance to offer on the problems now facing bitcoin and that the public will interpret Nakamoto’s writings in different ways.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.wired.com