The different implementations of the BCH protocols have resulted in the creation of two chain splits.
The Battle of Egos
The last couple of weeks have witnessed high-intensity drama around the hard fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
The hard fork of the BCH blockchain, which had forked off the Bitcoin blockchain last year, has finally resulted in the two camps going ahead with their respective versions of the code and the splitting of the BCH chain into two chains.
Both sides could not arrive at a consensus on the changes to be pushed as part of the regular biannual fork.
The price of BCH shot up by over 50% in anticipation of the fork only to end in a massive sell-off across the crypto-market earlier yesterday as the height of what is being called as the BCH civil war.
The two chains – Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV – have come into existence more as a result of a clash of egos than on any significant technological improvement. The two camps – Bitmain on one side and Craig Wright on the other – have in the last few weeks resorted to a public spat on social media.
Fork Details
Around 1.00pm EST, the miners started the fork by directing their hash rate to mine the respective forks that they were supporting.
According to data from Coin Dance, the first ABC block was mined by Bitcoin.com at block height 556767, followed by another block at the same height using the Bitcoin ABC protocol.
Jihan Wu, the co-founder of Bitmain who was recently stripped of his executive power by the company’s board, congratulated Bitcoin.com through a tweet.
At approximately 1.22pm EST, the first Bitcoin SV block was found at height 556767 by Mempool. That confirmed the formal splitting of the chain into two child chains. It was followed by another block being mined by SV pool at height 556768.
At the time of writing, 171 blocks have been mined under the new consensus rules, and Bitcoin ABC is currently 30 blocks ahead.
According to Coin Dance, Bitcoin ABC has a 58% hash rate while the SV has only a 42% hash rate.
Advice for BCH Holders
Holders of BCH should not carry out any transactions for a few days till clarity emerges about which split appears as the predominant chain. Currently, the risk of a transfer getting replayed on both chains exists.
Exchanges like Coinbase and Binance had announced their support for both chains a few days ahead of the fork while Poloniex had opened trading of the pre-fork tokens.
As the dust settles down, it will become clear whether both chains will survive, or that one will emerge as the primary one.
Which chain are you supporting – Bitcoin ABC or Bitcoin SV? Let us know in the comments below.
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