What are sidechains and drivechains? Altcoins have existed for many years and there are many hundreds of different ones already. A more recent concept is sidechains and drivechains.

What are sidechains and drivechains?

How do they differ from regular altcoins?
Sidechains are supposed to make it possible for users to move bitcoins between different bitcoin-based blockchains with different rule sets. For example, in this way, new techniques for preserving the privacy of transactions or a smart contract system similar to ethereum's could be added to a bitcoin blockchain, without changing the bitcoin blockchain. They are as an architecture for building semi-decentralised products and services for Bitcoin that were simply impossible before. With sidechains, users won’t be affected at all by any new programming.

Drivechain is a two-way peg for interacting with the sidechain. The key difference between drivechains and regular sidechains is who ultimately submits the necessary information to transfer the bitcoins back and forth: the users or the miners.

The side chain idea allows the native cryptocurrency to compete and win out over other competitors, as they are faster confirmed.