7. Migrating from BitShares 1.0 to BitShares 2.0

This migration tutorial is relevant only to those customers and investors that have participated in BitShares 1.0. We show improvements, new features and give assistance for claiming your funds in BitShares 2.0.


7.1. What is new in BitShares 2.0

Links take to (https://bitshares.org/) information pages.

  • Votable Network Parameters: BitShares 2.0 will allow its BTS Holders to fine-tune any parameter available to the protocol. This includes, block size, block interval, but also the payment for block producers and transaction fees.
  • Flexible and Dynamic Access Control: BitShares 2.0 allows customers and participants a flexible and dynamic access to its funds or account handle. A so called Authority can consist of a flat hierarchy similar to multi-signature in Bitcoin, but could also support tree hierarchies never to be seen before. Read more about this about dynamic account permissions.
  • Transferable Account Names: Since Control over Funds is separated from the control over an account, we can have transferable account names that are registered on the blockchain. Named accounts allows for much easier transfers because no cryptic strings needs to be handed out. Read more about transferable named accounts.
  • On-Chain Proposed Transactions: In traditional crypto currencies, a multi-signature transaction has to be transfered to its corresponding signers on separated communication channels (off-chain). BitShares 2.0 allows to propose transactions on the chain and have the signers be notified for their required signature automatically. No more manual communications are required.
  • New Full-Node/Client Concept: We recognize the hassles some people had when synchronizing the BitShares 1.0 blockchain with the heavy-weighted BitShares full client. In order to offer more comfort and a faster trading experience, we decided to separated the user-interface from the block syncing core component that connects to the peer-to-peer network. Of course, both are open source and a full node can run easily, we understand that some users mainly prefer to use the frontend not bothering about the blockchain.
  • Referral Program: PayPal and Dwolla showed the success of referral programs, a program that could easily and cheaper be implemented in a decentralized software protocol. Hence we took our chance and implemented a blockchain based referral program. From every transaction fee, paid by a customer you referred, you will get a fraction. Of course, this fraction can be tuned by BTS Holders! Read more about the referral program.
  • Recurring & Scheduled Payments: We wanted to offer a way to have our rent payed automatically. So we implemented it in the blockchain. In BitShares 2.0, participants are capable of allowing others to withdraw funds from your account. Of course, you can define a daily/weekly or monthly limit. Read more about recurring and scheduled payments.
  • Additional Privatized BitAssets: In contrast to Market Pegged Assets (also known as BitAssets) that have a price feed published by witnesses that have approval of BTS Holders, a privatized bitasset allows to create market pegged assets that have an individual set of price feed publishers that do not need BTS Holders’ approval. Hence, everyone can create a privatized bitAsset to track an individual value, such as indices, or binary predictions.


7.2. What has changed since BitShares 0.9

  • BitAssets are Contracts-For-Difference: Our research has identified an improved mechanism to achieve a solid peg of bitAssets to its underlay. BitAssets like the bitUSD in BitShares 2.0 will always trade for at least the value of its underlying asset, i.e. $1. We have summarized the economical analysis and incentives for market participants here: bitAssets 2.0
  • Faster Blocks: Initially, the BitShares 2.0 blockchain will come with 3 seconds block interval with the option to reduce down to 1 second if BTS Holders agree.
  • Industrial Performance: BitShares 2.0 can support massive load and works well beyond 100k transactions per second. Find out how we achieve industrial performance and scalability.
  • New Reactive UI: The BitShares 1.0 user interface was powerful but lacking in responsiveness and performance. For Bitshares 2.0 we’ve reimplemented the whole wallet using the React.js framework developed by Facebook, which is well-known for having excellent performance. The new BitShares UI is an entirely browser-based wallet, with private keys maintained in the browser. We expect a flourishing ecosystem of forked and tweaked wallets based off of our UI.
  • Accounts must be registered: In BitShares 2.0 we have separated authorities from transaction partners. Hence, if Alice wants to send funds to Bob, it may be required that only Celine signs for that transaction. Also, BitShares 2.0 has a referral program. Both features combined make it necessary that participants register an account on the blockchain.
  • No more Hierarchies in Account Names: In BitShares 1, there have been hierarchies in account names. Namely, you could only create a sub-account home.wallet if you also owned wallet. In BitShares 2.0, these hierarchies no longer exist and to register home.wallet you don’t need to own wallet.
  • Explicit Privacy: The TITAN technology in BitShares 2.0 slowed down blockchain processing significantly. Because of this and because TITAN did not really offer good privacy, we eliminated TITAN as a default transaction feature. Hence: Account transactions are public now as well. However, since we recognize the value of financial privacy, we offer blinded transactions that hide the transferred amount, and stealth transactions that hide the sender and receiver. A combination of both is also possible.
  • Prices are Fractions: To circumvent rounding errors, all prices in BitShares 2.0 are represented as fractions.
  • Delegates are now Witnesses and Payed Positions are now Budget Items: Since we have separated the business part from the block producing part, we now call block producers (formerly known as delegates) witnesses, while the additional payed position for workers are called budget items.


7.3. Blockchain Upgrade

BitShares 2.0 will be initialized with what is called a Genesis Block. That genesis block will be constructed from the balances of BitShares 1.0. BitShares 1.0 offers many features that need to be migrated into BitShares 2.0. To simplify the process and reduce the risk of errors, the following conditions will be met:

  • Funds:

    • BTS Tokens: All BTS balances will be migrated 1:1. The supply not change!
    • User-Issued-Assets: All UAI tokens will be migrated 1:1
    • BitAssets: Because the new chain is a simple migration and should retain all the same “perceived value”, all BitAssets and short positions are migrated 1:1.
  • Account Names: Under BitShares 2.0, accounts are transferable and have different prices based upon the “quality” of the account name. Any “premium” names registered on or after 2015-06-08 (US Eastern time) will be given the prefix “bts-“ or similar after the migration. All account names registered on or after 2015-06-18 (US Eastern time) will be prefixed with “bts-” unless they were registered using the BitShares Faucet.

    • Premium Name: No numbers and has vowels
    • Cheap Name: Has numbers or no vowels

    All other account names will be migrated with their corresponding owner/active keys.

  • Open Orders: Open orders (except open short positions) will not migrate and the funds will be credited to the corresponding owners.

  • Open Shorts: Short orders will be migrated to BitShares 2.0 on a 1:1 ratio. You collateral will be imported as a separated account (e.g. usd-collateral-holder-124) under your control.

  • Transaction History: Transaction histories of BitShares 1.0 will be inaccessible in BitShares 2.0.

  • Vesting Balances: Vesting balances will migrate under the existing terms, if two or more vesting balances were partially claimed as part of the same transaction prior to the snapshot the vesting balances may be merged into a single balance.

  • Unclaimed Delegate Pay: Delegates that did not claim their pay prior to the snapshot will be able to claim their pay by importing their corresponding keys similar to any other balance.

  • Assets: User issued assets and market pegged assets will migrated with their corresponding issuer and holders.

  • Deprecated Features: Some features have turned out to be unreliable or impractical and will thus deprecate:

    • Wall Messages will not be migrated as the feature is now deprecated
    • Asset description information is no longer part of the blockchain state and will not be migrated
    • Account public data is deprecated and is no longer part of the blockchain state
    • BitShares URL scheme: bts:// will be deprecated due to migration to hosted web wallets