Syscoin Network’s Jagdeep Sidhu wrote that Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain, while Ethereum’s proof-of-stake move will expose it to more security risks.

Here we are at last. After eight years of discussions, Ethereum 2.0 appears to be ready and coming soon.

Now that the Ethereum merger is almost here, we can start thinking about what the combined world will look like. At this point, most believe that while Ethereum is still the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to smart contracts and composable Web 3.0 features, the future of blockchain-based connectivity will be multi-chain based .

Of course, this leads to the next big question: Specifically, which of these Ethereum Virtual Machine-based protocols represents the most secure, scalable bottom layer for Web3 applications? But the entire discussion around Ethereum and these so-called Ethereum killers tends to ignore the oldest and most secure base layer ever created. Bitcoin.

Actually, there’s a reason no one talks about Bitcoin. Simply put, there is nothing to talk about. There are no news reports about the Bitcoin hack. There is no article about centralized institutions hijacking the consensus process for nefarious purposes. There are no stories of hundreds of millions of dollars lost to vulnerabilities exposed in the architecture that make cryptocurrency trading so appealing.

Because none of these things happen with Bitcoin. Bitcoin just works. This is why Bitcoin could be the real Ethereum killer.

To be clear, just because there are no stories of successful attacks against Bitcoin doesn’t mean the bad guys haven’t tried. Instead, it reflects the clear advantages Bitcoin has over other alternatives. First, with over 174 million economically relevant Bitcoin addresses and over 14,000 reachable nodes participating in consensus, Bitcoin is by far the most decentralized blockchain. Therefore, Bitcoin’s settlement base layer provides the safest protection even in the face of external factors such as state stack attacks, wars, and hyperinflation.

Perhaps the biggest fundamental difference between the new Ethereum and the current version is the transition from proof-of-work (PoW) consensus to proof-of-stake (PoS). Admittedly, PoW has its drawbacks, which are well documented. The mining competition to validate each block is energy-intensive, with miners all doing the same job. Also, as the arms race accelerates, Bitcoin mining is no longer the preserve of the fabled loner with a laptop, but is reserved for large corporations, even public companies, whose warehouses are filled with specialized servers . Arguably, this centralizes network power and rewards in the hands of a small number of node operators. The most ardent opponents of PoW will even say that the end result of this concentration of power is a centralized network — the exact opposite of what blockchains are after.

And PoS also has some benefits. It’s probably better for the environment, as miners don’t waste energy competing. In contrast, in PoS consensus, each potential miner reserves or “stakes” some tokens as collateral. The network randomly selects stakers, and those tokens with the most stakes have the best chance of being picked and rewarded for mining. There is no competition and no wasted energy. Also, unlike BTC, mining rewards happen simultaneously when miners create blocks, whereas in PoS the rewards are delayed as the rest of the network validates the blocks – allowing the network to generate tokens by forfeiting all or part of their stake coins to punish (or “cut”) bad actors.

However, perhaps the most important criterion for building decentralized data structures has been lost amid the enthusiasm of environmentalists for more energy-efficient solutions. The transition from PoW to PoS greatly increases the complexity. The rules governing this process don’t just happen. For example, network governance must determine what level of collateral is required to take a stake, and what the penalties for haggling are. Likewise, it must be determined how long the challenge period will be before a block is accepted. Making these decisions isn’t always easy. Higher minimum requirements and penalties for bad blocks provide strong incentives for good behavior, but they also narrow the pool of participants, potentially leading to a more centralized and less secure structure. Conversely, lower requirements may also be unhelpful.

At the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. Bitcoin’s PoW protocol has yet to be successfully attacked. This represents a history of over 10 years of successful management without corruption. A quick check of the news from the past few weeks shows that this is not the case for PoS protocols.

Of course, Ethereum’s killer use case is not the same as what we’ve traditionally seen with Bitcoin. Ethereum is considered to serve as a decentralized base layer for the ultimate purpose of managing state submissions for the next generation of networked applications. But this is again reminiscent of the problem we started with. If Bitcoin is the most secure of all base layers, why is it not in this discussion? The answer is that the topic is constantly evolving.

The benefits of this approach are becoming clearer every day as players advance the EVM protocol to leverage Bitcoin’s unparalleled security as the data layer for the next generation of decentralized applications. In the near future, we may find that the best solution to the Web3 puzzle has always been in Bitcoin’s mature framework.