Bitcoin Cash is undergoing a collective decision making process regarding an upcoming November 15th upgrade which some consider as contentious.
Coinbase has come out to say they will back “the published roadmap from bitcoincash.org.” That being the BitcoinABC client which has a number of changes, including canonical ordering.
Coinbase also said: “In the unlikely event that multiple viable chains persist after the fork, Coinbase will ensure that customers have access to their funds on each chain.”
Presumably that means they will provide access to BSV, a new potential coin from Craig Wright’s BitcoinSV client backed by one of the biggest BCH miner, Coingeek.
“Any DSV spend will eventually be blacklisted on SV. You support DSV, then, you will have unspendable coin,” Wright said.
DSV being OP_CHECKDATASIGVERIFY, a very technical protocol improvement that enables oracles and cross-chain atomic contracts.
This, and canonical ordering, appeared to have full consensus until ABC published their plans for the November hardfork where they claimed canonical ordering would make o-confirmed transactions safer.
Wright took issue with that claim, and then from there started taking issue with every aspect of the ABC roadmap. Meaning a chain-split looks guaranteed.
“Bitcoin.com… will mine on block templates provided by Bitcoin Unlimited 1.5.0.0 and Bitcoin ABC 18.2…
All services on Bitcoin.com, including the Faucet, Cash Games and Mining Pool after the network upgrade will send out BCH originating from an output using OP_CHECKDATASIG.”
So said Roger Ver’s Bitcoin.com, one of the BCH miners. That’s the same DataSig that Wright says his client, BitcoinSV, will blacklist.
What that means exactly is not very clear because BitcoinSV hasn’t incorporated DSV, thus can’t send DSV transactions, thus can’t blacklist them.
The two clients are fully incompatible after November 15th. The first block that is mined on either client will create a chain-split. At that point, there will be two networks. The Bitcoin ABC network and other clients compatible with it, like Bitcoin Unlimited. And the BitcoinSV network.
There will be two coins, if both clients are mined upon. BCH and BSV. The latter will have a market as CoinEx will list it.
The miners can not intervene in each other’s coins as miners do not make the rules, they choose them. The rules are made by the protocol client.
Miners have to follow the rules of that client, say ABC. If they run a different client with different rules, like SV, then as far as ABC is concerned it’s as if these miners don’t exist.
Wright has suggested he will force the network to his client by making the ABC chain in-operational. That’s, however, close to impossible because the only way to do so is to keep mining on the ABC upgraded client, and then fork blocks with 51% of the hashrate.
For this to work, he would need more than 51% on SV as well, and keep more than 51% on both chains. Now miners probably don’t care about what happens on SV, but Bitmain has about one million BCH, so they do care about what happens there.
A fun strategy here might be to let Calvin Ayre of Coingeek mine some blocks and think he is “winning,” then publish the “valid” longest chain and have him forked off as well as his money burned.
Something Bitmain and the like can easily do by “borrowing” a bit of their BTC hashrate temporarily. Making the exercise very much pointless.
BCH users, however, are strongly urged to not transact starting November 14th preferably, certainly not on November 15th, and do best to wait until November 16th or maybe even 17th.
That’s because if there is a hash-fight, confirmed transactions might become unconfirmed. If one wants to transact, therefore, you’d need many confirmations, say 60 or 120, before acting on the BCH payment.
Craig Wright affiliated pools currently do not have more than 51% of the hashrate, so the upgrade might be uneventful as far as BCH is concerned. While if BSV does get listed, then there may be some popcorn for traders.
“Binance would like to confirm support for the upcoming Bitcoin Cash hard fork… please refer to the official announcement at Bitcoin Cash 2018 Nov Upgrade,” they say, linking to the ABC roadmap.
Meaning it looks like key exchanges and miners are backing ABC. That might see a hash drop if Coingeek goes to SV, but BCH’s difficulty now adjusts by block, so the network wouldn’t see any difference as far as the processing of transactions is concerned.
But whether Coingeek does keep backing Wright remains to be seen. That’s because miners tend to be profit motivated, sending their hardware to the coin with the highest profit margins.
That, in part, would be determined by price. Something that remains to be seen as it is not clear whether SV would have a non-zero price at all, and if so at what level it will settle.
Copyrights Trustnodes.com
