An article to understand the cause and effect of this BCH fork
This article comes frombitcoinmagazine, original author: Aaron Van Wiredum
Odaily Translator |
Odaily Translator |
On the evening of November 15th, Beijing time, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will fork again.
Two years later (by November 15th at 12:00 UTC to be precise), another hard fork upgrade and another dispute within the Bitcoin Cash community could lead to another split.
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How did this controversy happen? (And who are the parties to the dispute?)
The core of the bitcoin cash hard fork controversy is an upgrade called "Infrastructure Funding Plan" (IFP, Infrastructure Funding Plan). According to the rules of the agreement, the infrastructure financing plan will force 8 % (Bitcoin Cash earned by miners) is delegated to software projects that power Bitcoin Cash, such as Bitcoin ABC.
According to the Bitcoin ABC team, the "infrastructure funding plan" (sometimes referred to as a "miner tax") will be mandated through a new organization called the Global Network Council, which will consist of major miners and crypto miners. Composition of currency holders. So far, the Global Cyber Council has only announced that it will hold its first meeting in January 2021, but other than that, no details about the selection of members or the funding allocation process have been publicly disclosed.
Bitcoin Cash Node is a software fork of Bitcoin ABC initiated by Bitcoin Cash developers and users who objected to the "Infrastructure Funding Initiative" and had the upgrade removed from its source code.
The Infrastructure Finance Program is controversial for a number of reasons, such as:
1. Some people refuse to upgrade on cryptographic grounds because they believe that the "miner tax" is inconsistent with the original philosophy and original design of Bitcoin Cash (or Bitcoin).
3. The "Infrastructure Financing Plan" did not disclose details about the allocation of funds to the outside world. This situation may eventually allow Bitcoin ABC to obtain more benefits than other clients. Therefore, the fact that Bitcoin ABC is still trying to promote change after being opposed by some Bitcoin Cash communities is actually one of the core issues that have caused controversy.
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Does this hard fork include any other protocol changes?
Yes, both Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Cash Node will be deploying new difficulty adjustment algorithms.
New Bitcoin Cash blockchains (similar to Bitcoin blocks) are found by miners on average in about 10 minutes, but since Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin share the same mining algorithm, sometimes some Bitcoin miners will seek Switch to Bitcoin Cash network mining for higher profits. However, Bitcoin Cash's computing power only accounts for a small part of the total Bitcoin computing power, so when some Bitcoin miners transfer to the Bitcoin Cash network, it will cause the latter's computing power to fluctuate greatly - this situation will cause Periodic contingencies in which Bitcoin Cash blocks are generated much faster than 10 minutes, and the difficulty of the network increases with it. After the difficulty increases, those "mercenary" Bitcoin miners will move to the Bitcoin network to continue mining BTC, leaving the real Bitcoin Cash miners on the less profitable chain. Not only that, but a sharp drop in computing power will also lead to a sudden drop in block production speed, and users will feel that Bitcoin Cash transaction confirmation is very unreliable.
To help stabilize the rate of block production, the Bitcoin ABC team initially proposed a new dynamic difficulty adjustment algorithm called Grasberg. However, other changes could be triggered by the deployment of the Grasberg algorithm, which is said to have intentionally slowed down blockchain production for a few years to correct for "historical drift"—admittedly, previously due to a variety of reasons (such as past difficulty algorithms) etc.), Bitcoin Cash blocks are currently being mined faster than originally planned.
The Bitcoin ABC team finally accepted to implement the ASERT algorithm and abandoned Grasberg, which means that Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash Node will be compatible - except for the "infrastructure financing plan".
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Why did Bitcoin ABC launch two versions of the software client?
Over the weekend, Bitcoin ABC announced that it will release two versions of the Bitcoin ABC software client, one version of which will implement the "Infrastructure Funding Program" protocol rules as planned, but the other version will not and will instead integrate with Bitcoin Cash Node is fully compatible.
However, the Bitcoin ABC team will only be committed to implementing its development roadmap on a software version that implements the protocol rules of the "Infrastructure Funding Program", which includes:
1. Provide more flexible block size limit;
As for another version that does not support the "Infrastructure Financing Plan" protocol rules, it can only obtain the minimum maintenance service, and only maintains compatibility with Bitcoin Cash Node, and there should be no further optimization and improvement in the future.
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Will this hard fork necessarily trigger a split in the Bitcoin Cash token?
incomplete.
First, it's worth noting that the Bitcoin Cash clients (Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Cash Node) are both programmed to abort the current protocol, so they all more or less require a hard fork upgrade, which means that the current version of Bitcoin Cash is almost certainly not here to stay.
Obviously, if Bitcoin ABC or Bitcoin Cash Node cannot attract enough computing power to fully generate a valid blockchain, there will be no token split, because only the blockchain with the ability to attract enough computing power can continue to exist.
In practice, token splitting will only happen if both Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Cash Node have enough computing power to produce a viable blockchain, which means that Bitcoin Cash Node needs to gain more than half total computing power of the network.
Also, there is another interesting situation where token splits can be avoided. If Bitcoin ABC ABC attracts more than half of the computing power between the two (and maintains the majority), then the Bitcoin Cash Node client will actually follow the Bitcoin ABC blockchain - which is why it is said that for Bitcoin Cash Node, This new Bitcoin ABC software is actually a soft fork. The agreement rules of both parties are similar. The only difference is the addition of the "infrastructure financing plan" rule restriction.
(Odaily Jun’s Note: There may be other more complex scenarios, such as the use of new hard forks that may also lead to token splits-but these possibilities are relatively small and beyond the scope of the topic of this article.)
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What might happen after this Bitcoin Cash fork?
For now, Bitcoin Cash Node has more computing power than Bitcoin ABC, more than 80% at the time of writing, compared to less than 1% for Bitcoin ABC. In addition, Bitcoin Cash Node also seems to have more community support, with major cryptocurrency exchanges and crypto companies like Coinbase, Kraken, and BitGo also expressing their support for Bitcoin Cash Node. Therefore, it seems likely that Bitcoin Cash will continue to exist through Bitcoin Cash Node and a compatible version of Bitcoin ABC. (Although some cryptocurrency exchanges may choose "BCHN" or other symbol variants, some cryptocurrency exchanges may also receive the "BCH" symbol).
On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether a version of Bitcoin ABC that supports the "Infrastructure Funding Initiative" will attract enough computing power to produce a viable blockchain. But assuming this happens, Bitcoin ABC may have a strategic advantage over Bitcoin Cash Node, namely:
If Bitcoin ABC has more computing power than Bitcoin Cash Node, even after the token split occurs (but up to ten blocks), the Bitcoin Cash Node blockchain will theoretically "collapse", as more and more Bitcoin Cash Node clients start accepting the Bitcoin ABC blockchain, and the Bitcoin Cash Node blockchain will eventually fade away. Any tokens mined on the Bitcoin Cash Node blockchain, and any tokens received on the Bitcoin Cash Node blockchain, will also be lost.
At this point, if we take everything into consideration, it seems that Bitcoin Cash Node is ultimately more likely to represent the continuation of "Bitcoin Cash" (Bitcoin Cash), while Bitcoin ABC is likely to create a "new" cryptocurrency that will most likely be Called "Bitcoin ABC" (token symbol may be designated as BAB).
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I hold BCH, do I need to do anything about this fork?
If you hold the private key yourself, you basically don't need to do anything. In the event of a token split, you will be able to use both tokens. (However, you may have to upgrade to new client/wallet software, depending on which client/wallet software you are using.)
However, it is best not to send tokens before and after this hard fork occurs, because neither Bitcoin Cash ABC nor Bitcoin Cash Node implements replay protection, so sending either token may result in another block The currency equivalent was accidentally sent on-chain. To make sure this doesn't happen, you'd better wait until the hard fork is over and things become clearer.
You may also want to hold off on receiving tokens on the Bitcoin Cash Node blockchain, although the risk seems minimal, the blockchain could "collapse" to Bitcoin ABC if it attracts more hash power In the blockchain, the tokens you received at this time will most likely disappear with them. Again, to make sure this doesn't happen, you'd better wait until the hard fork is over and things become clearer.
