The age-old question, what comes first? The chicken or the egg? can be directly applied to mainstream adoption of Bitcoin. What comes first? Bitcoin development, or Bitcoin adoption?

We all know that development leads to adoption, but it’s also true that adoption inspires development. This is evident in what has happened with Bitcoin this year. Since its creation, it has been the number one cryptocurrency in terms of market cap. There’s no denying that Bitcoin’s development has been moving at a snail’s pace. Taproot is the first major upgrade to the protocol in several years since the implementation of SegWit.

Part of this is due to how decentralized Bitcoin is. For any protocol change to be implemented; it must be unanimously approved. But there is another reason for this slow development that has occurred over the years. The Bitcoin blockchain has grown to such enormous value that it is considered pristine and must be protected at all costs. This means that any development is rigorously tested and debated before it is even considered approved. Developers don’t want to risk breaking Bitcoin.

However, due to this approach, Bitcoin’s development and improvement have been stunted. For years, Bitcoin’s layer 2 Lightning Network saw little growth and many considered it a failed project. It’s only in recent years that adoption has finally begun to take off.

This begs the question. Is it better to take a slow and cautious approach, or to move forward quickly and fix problems as they arise?

At the beginning of 2023, Bitcoin Ordinals (NFT inscriptions) started being executed on Bitcoin. This completely changed everyone's perception of Bitcoin. A few months later, we are now also seeing the creation of BRC20. Suddenly there is a huge demand for Bitcoin block space, which may help solve one of Bitcoin's biggest problems. How do they pay miners once the Bitcoin halving causes the mining rewards to drop? Currently, transaction fees are almost equal to newly mined Bitcoin. Suddenly, one of Bitcoin's biggest problems may have a solution.

People have been complaining about rising transaction costs and how they are priced out of the chain for the average person to use. The Lightning Network does solve this problem and has started to see unprecedented usage. Due to the increasing demand for cheaper Bitcoin fees, Binance even announced that they would be implementing the Lightning Network on the exchange. Something they had been avoiding for years. This year, all the new adoption from people with ideals that Bitcoiners don’t normally associate with has helped not only speed up Bitcoin’s development, but has also accelerated the Lightning Network’s development by years in a matter of weeks.

In this case, adoption increases development.

Life always finds a way. Sometimes we are motivated to solve problems only when they actually happen. We won't do it unless we need to do it in order to survive.

Developing quickly and fixing problems quickly would be the strategy you want to use if that was the most efficient approach. However, it is important to note that Bitcoin is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. It was even worth over a trillion dollars at its peak. The entire cryptocurrency industry currently relies on Bitcoin. If Bitcoin develops too quickly, there could be a fatal mistake that would not only spell the end of Bitcoin, but would be a fatal blow to the cryptocurrency market. If Bitcoin developed as quickly as other cryptocurrencies have, we would all be very excited. We also have to remember that it is playing a different game as well. Bitcoin is in it for the long haul and is trying to replace government fiat currencies and become the new world reserve currency.