A day after the hard bitcoin cash fork: takeaway and latest developments

Bitcoin Cash, the "big block" project that separated from Bitcoin's blockchain in August 2017, was split into two different pieces: "Bitcoin Cash ABC" (BCH ABC) and "Bitcoin Cash SV" ( BCH SV).

At the time of writing this article, the ABC chain of Bitcoin Cash has more proof of work and its motto, BCH ABC, is trading up on the markets (futures). As a result, most ABC supporters of Bitcoin Cash feel victorious – although many supporters of Bitcoin Cash SV have not yet conceded their defeat.

More than a day after the split, here are the main takeaways and the latest developments.

Controversy at checkpoints

It turns out that Bitcoin ABC's development team had a spin in their bag – and not everyone is happy. The developers included a non-advertised checkpoint in their latest version of the software, which was distributed several hours after the fork.

The checkpoint imposes the inclusion of the first ABC block of Bitcoin Cash as a new protocol rule. Any string without this block would be considered invalid by this Bitcoin ABC software client. This has the effect that the accusing miners are unable to bypass ('reorganize') the entire ABC chain of Bitcoin Cash – which was one of the potential threats posed by a 'hash war'.

The checkpoint is however controversial because it involves the central control of the Bitcoin ABC development team on ABC Bitcoin Cash. When nodes generally follow the longest and most valid work validation chain, a checkpoint is considered a priority over this work validation consensus mechanism.

Of course, users ultimately decide which software they use and can choose to reject the version of Bitcoin ABC controlled by a checkpoint. But this opens up the risk that the checkpoint will cause another split – this time on the ABC chain of Bitcoin Cash, creating "Checkpoint Bitcoin Cash ABC" and "Bitcoin Cash ABC Classic". (These names are simply hypothetical, composed for the purposes of this article.)

That said, such a split seems unlikely at the moment. According to forkmonitor.info, it would cost about a million dollars at the time of writing this article.

Future attacks

While Bitcoin Cash ABC supporters seem generally confident in their "victory," many Bitcoin Cash SV supporters do not concede defeat.

For example, the chief scientist of nChain and the main man behind Bitcoin SV, Craig Steven Wright, tweeted that the "hash war" is a marathon, not a sprint: implied attacks are yet to come. Coingeek and his owner, Calvin Ayre, also say that the hash war is just beginning. Other supporters of Bitcoin Cash SV also anticipate other types of attacks (such as a type of spam attack dubbed "Satoshi's Shotgun"). All of this will eventually erase the ABC chain of Bitcoin Cash, they say.

There is no evidence of this type of upcoming attacks, perhaps with the exception of the Satoshi shotgun. The Bitcoin Cash network suffered a big spam attack last week. There was also a lot of spam on the Bitcoin Cash network at the time of the hard fork. This may have been a precursor.

It is also true that the status of Bitcoin Cash's ABC network was unusual that day, as an excessive amount of hash power secured it (excessive in relation to its respective profitability, suggesting that miners were operating at a loss). This is due in part to the fact that the bitcoin.com pool has temporarily diverted its hash power from Bitcoin mining to Bitcoin Cash ABC mining.

Over time, it is expected that the amount of hash power protecting the ABC chain of Bitcoin Cash will decrease to normal levels (normal rate compared to expected profitability). The Bitcoin Cash ABC network would then also be more vulnerable to attacks at 51%.

Name and tickers

With Bitcoin Cash divided into two different coins, the names of both are the subject of controversy.

What is clear though is that the two main Software the implementations are called "Bitcoin ABC" and "Bitcoin SV".

Until there, Bitcoin Magazine As part of this article, the protocol and blockchain based on the Bitcoin ABC implementation are called "Bitcoin Cash ABC", while the Bitcoin-based protocol and blockchain SV are called "Bitcoin Cash SV". The currency codes used are "BCH ABC" and "BCH SV". But not everyone uses these names and tickers.

Many Bitcoin Cash ABC supporters, in particular, view their protocol and blockchain as "Bitcoin Cash", and some probably prefer "Bitcoin". They also claim the ticker "BCH".

Many supporters of Bitcoin Cash SV believe that it is too early to rename anything because they think that there will only be one more channel: Bitcoin Cash SV, which is will call "Bitcoin Cash" (or "Bitcoin"). BCH. "

Others have proposed different names and (especially) stock symbols. These include "BAB" for BCH ABC and "BSV" for BCH SV. And some exchanges do not mention BCH SV at all.

For a more complete overview of the different names and tickers, see this article.

For more information on the difficult range of yesterday, check out this article.

Thanks to Sjors Provoost for his comments and additional sources.