In less than 15 days the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain rules are scheduled to change. Many are aware of a disagreement between two significant parties in the BCH camp: BitcoinABC from Amaury Sechet, and SV from Craig Wright. This disagreement likely means two incompatible chains emerging at the hard-fork point. This post seeks to helpfully inform the community. Not everyone follows BCH events similarly, as evident by this poster's "some guy" comment.
I'm requesting ecosystem participants post their position for an informal but nonetheless revealing poll. The most helpful statements would be from major players like Roger Ver (CEO of Bitcoin.com and moderator of /r/BTC) and CoinBase.com. Miners, developers, and entrepreneurs are also key and valuable. All it takes is a tweet, blog or site post, comment here or similar, not much in other words for a helpful indication of intent. This is important because what makes a coin valuable is the real world support it enjoys among roles mentioned, not anything digital.
Overview
Bitcoin Cash split from the Bitcoin BTC chain on August 1, 2017. It seemed the road was finally clear, full of limitless potential, and assured growth. This wasn't the truth. The reason is the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency means anyone no matter how insignificant can raise objection to the course of tech development. Amaury Sechet is credited with initiating the Bitcoin Cash fork. It was he who started the "8MB project" when many other node options, such as SegWit2X etc, were being floated to resolve block size. In this sense, Aumaury created an "alt-coin". We know it's an alternative because it has a completely new ticker: BCH. Whether or not this remains closest to the original white paper "Bitcoin" (which I think it does) is another issue. The point is Bitcoin Cash has a sort of dual nature, but nonetheless matching behavior to hundreds of prior alt-coins. We couldn't get >95% of the original BTC community to change so we left, voluntarily.
That's the truth. Having learned from Blockstream's stalemate, yet knowing the BCH project needed many months of continued tech evolution (via hard-forks) Amaury took a novel action: in a BitcoinABC software release he implemented a sort of self-destruct instruction so users wouldn't be able to sit on their hands at fork time. Instead, they would be forced to take some action, even if that action was just removing the self-destruct code. The brilliance here is it broke all default consensus. Even maintaining status quo required clear action. In this way Amaury mandated ecosystem node participants settle on some consensus way forward. Having the most popular node adoption at ~60% the choice would most likely be BitcoinABC. Brilliant.
The CSW Disagreement
Most now are familiar with Craig S. Wright, who claims he is Satoshi. He has raised a disagreement with BitcoinABC's scheduled hard-fork, and appears to have influence over enough existing BCH hashrate to warrant attention. He advocates for a Satoshi's Vision ("SV") node implementation. I would note no issues are major in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, BitcoinABC plans similar features themselves. This disagreement has more to do with who is seen as more authoritative for tech leadership going forward. That's what this disruptive, progress impeding second chain war is over. I don't like the war, but if it's necessary to sort out incompatible work relationships then I say let it come and be over with so people interested in productivity can move forward again.
For myself I side with BitcoinABC. I won't work under a BCH project with CSW appearing most prominently. This isn't based on anything personal. I've never met him. However, I'm aware of factual historical problematic issues:
- He hung Gavin (someone I admire and respect greatly) out to dry in either case: A) He is Satoshi and left Gavin looking foolish for self serving advantage B) He is a con man
- He appears to be a patent troll (one who agressively pursues strategic industry patents with apparent aim of market monopoly or influence)
- He has been caught commiting blatant plagiarism of both ideas and wording more than once
- His technical care and skill are questionable to say the least
- His behavior alone invites tension, drama and disruption to serious attempts at problem solving (e.g., reporting by Jonald Fyookball of his childish outburst and abrupt exit at a conference)
- He seems to have bad judgement on pursuing likely illegal and/or immoral decisions involving fraud
Regardless of any other facts about him, being Satoshi or not, helping old ladies across the street or not, those issues are substantial and problematic to me in a future working relationship where seriousness, integrity, ideally comradery and productivity are most desirable. So I've decided all my tech input and interest, resources and projects including recently completed PeerTraders.cash (a hyper secure multisig P2P exchange) and larger planned project(s) won't be on a BCH blockchain headed by Craig Wright. I'll find another crypto home, probably Ethereum, which, though I'm skeptical of their ability to solve key scaling problems, has made it this far. Clear leadership under Vitalik, whom I've always personally liked, is a plus.
Hash War Significance
Many have a misunderstanding about hashrate regarding Bitcoin, leading people to believe that because CoinGeek, who sides with CSW, controls about 25% of BCH hashrate alone (the largest single share), by combining that with resources favoring CSW the CSW side of things will prevail and win the rights to BCH. That's not necessarily true.
First, to my knowledge CoinGeek isn't even a pool. It's hashrate directly bought and controlled by a single wealthy individual. Following this line of reasoning three more wealthy individuals could buy comparable setups, then all hash wars and Bitcoin control would be decided by only 4 people. That makes no sense and wasn't the goal of the protocol's "one CPU is one vote". Instead, the idea was grassroots, where currency derives value, would voluntarily participate and by sheer numbers overwhelm randomnly wealthy individual interests.
The truth is currency value comes from participants who voluntaritly contribute and buy in, not hashrate. Hashrate follows that value, and secures it in a supposedly impartial, incentive-aligned way. A small coin project, which BCH is at this point, doesn't need excessive hashing security. It could even survive with just a handful of garage miners if there was strong community consensus and passion. The reason is it's the consensus of the group that provides the ultimate security. A group can reject entities caught behaving in a negative/harmful fashion, such as using block withholding attacks or double spend fraud. A ban on such detected source behavior would render any amount of "attack" hashrate meaningless.
It's the consensus of a community/ecosystem that really defines a coin and its future. Which side will you support? The more info everyone has the better off we are. I'll post an updated list for days leading up to the fork.
BitcoinABC
BitcoinCash.org (apparently), u/cryptos4pz
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