A week later: the latest developments in the Bitcoin cash split

Bitcoin Cash, the "big block" project that separated from the Bitcoin blockchain in August 2017, was split into two different coins last week: "Bitcoin Cash ABC" (BCHABC) and "Bitcoin Cash SV" "(BCHSV)).

A week later, Bitcoin Cash's ABC chain has accumulated more evidence of work and has been "ahead" on the Bitcoin Cash SV channel almost since the split. The currency of his country, the BCHABC, is also trading on the stock markets. As a result, most ABC supporters of Bitcoin Cash feel victorious – but all Bitcoin Cash SV supporters believe the battle is not over yet.

Here are the main takeaways and the latest developments following the split of Bitcoin Cash.

Attack of endurance

While some expected a "hash war" between the two chains (especially because Craig Steven Wright, CEO of nChain and leader of the SV Bitcoin, had announced), there is no need had no sign of attack in the first week after the split. A hint that the Bitcoin Cash SV chain has suffered a reorg attack (a valid string is replaced by an alternative valid string) has turned out to be a false alarm – and this is mainly the ABC chain of Bitcoin Cash that has been threatened with attacks.

Instead, the "hash war" seems to have become what Wright and others call an "endurance attack" or a "persistence hunt". The idea is that, while Bitcoin Cash ABC has been able to defend its chain against hash power attacks, it has been very expensive and can not last forever. If and when more minors leave the network, the 51% attack (s) will take place.

Indeed, this looming threat continues to attract an unusual amount of hash power in the ABC chain of Bitcoin Cash. Where miners often extract the most profitable coin, Bitcoin Cash ABC has got more hash power than the value of its bulk reward would justify. By estimate the endurance war has already cost the two camps millions of dollars. (The Bitcoin Cash SV chain also attracted an unusual amount of hash power but did not receive similar threats.)

Perhaps Bitcoin Cash's ABC camp also wants to stay ahead in this "race for power" for other reasons. They might believe that this gives them a stronger claim of the "Bitcoin Cash" brand, for example. However, there is no technical reason to stay ahead. At this point, the two blockchains are completely separated; even if the Bitcoin Cash SV chain was ahead of the ABC Bitcoin Cash chain, both would continue to operate normally.

Checkpoint

To try to thwart certain types of attacks to 51%, the Bitcoin Cash ABC development team has implemented a new checkpoint system. In addition to an initial checkpoint where the new ABC Bitcoin Cash chain has started, the latest version of the Bitcoin Cash ABC client software does not allow reorganizations of block chains deeper than 10 blocks. This effectively means that once a transaction has 10 confirmations, the software considers it to be final. Even if a longer and otherwise valid string appears, these Bitcoin Cash ABC customers will reject it if more than 10 blocks need to be replaced.

This change is controversial – mainly because it opens Bitcoin Cash ABC to new attack vectors. While malicious miners could only rearrange the chain, they can now split it by releasing a long alternative chain at the right time. If all ABC users of Bitcoin Cash do not accept the new checkpoint rule, the malicious minor may even publish a longer alternative string at any time. Without a certain level of coordination between users, this could lead to the creation of two separate currencies, such as "Bitcoin Cash ABC Classic" and "Bitcoin Cash ABC Checkpoint" (but this seems like a rather unlikely scenario).

In addition, the new protocol rule has been implemented and published without coordination through various ABC Bitcoin Cash development projects, such as Bitcoin Unlimited. This not only implies centralized governance of the Bitcoin Cash ABC protocol by Bitcoin Cash ABC's development team, but also greatly increases the aforementioned risks.

The involvement of Calvin Ayre

In the weeks and months leading up to the split, most of Bitcoin Cash's most prominent supporters had sided with the ABC faction of Bitcoin Cash – though reluctantly in some cases. The most notable exception to this rule is perhaps the online game tycoon and Coingeek owner, Calvin Ayre. Over the past week, Ayre has demanded more attention.

On the one hand, he has openly threatened with legal action some of ABC's most prominent Bitcoin Cash supporters. The game's mogul claims that Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu, Bitcoin Cash ABC's chief developer Amaury Séchet, bitcoin.com general manager Roger Ver, and Kraken chief executive Jesse Powell have teamed up to the manipulation of the market. said he has documents to prove it. What these documents might reveal is not entirely clear.

Second, Ayre proposed what can be considered an offer of peace, approved by Wright. If the ABC side of the Bitcoin Cash split implements anti-replay protection, ensuring that users can not accidentally spend coins in the chain that they did not want, it will leave it in there. state. However, it does not seem likely for the moment that Bitcoin Cash ABC put in place a protection against replay. Even if this is the case, it may divide the Bitcoin Cash ABC chain again if not all users upgrade.

As such, there is no indication that imminent threats of 51% attacks will soon disappear.

S & # 39; install

Despite the hostility and relative chaos, BCHABC and BCHSV erect themselves into autonomous cryptocurrency. This includes the adoption of separate names and stock symbols, although these still vary between exchanges and other users. Most existing Bitcoin Cash infrastructures have adopted Bitcoin Cash ABC as the new "Bitcoin Cash". But the infrastructure for Bitcoin Cash SV will also go online, such as a block explorer. Meanwhile, Bitcoin Cash SV also exploited several blocks exceeding 32 megabytes, which distinguishes Bitcoin Cash ABC (but not without problems ).

The price action however was not favorable to one or the other room. Although it is difficult to say with certainty (and there are often multiple reasons that coincide), the threat of a hashish war seemed to have caused a massive sell off of the BCH markets, which apparently reduced the larger markets of cryptocurrency to its downfall.

This sale continues throughout the week. While BCH was trading about $ 600 a week before the split, BCHABC ($ 195) and BCHSV ($ 45) are trading at $ 240 at the time of writing. This represents a decrease of about 60%. Nevertheless, BCHABC retains fourth place on parts ranking websites, previously owned by BCH. BCHSV has not yet been fully integrated into these cards, but at current rates (at the time of writing), it is about to take 13th place.