In mid-2017, the Bitcoin ABC software customer moved away from the Bitcoin protocol to create its own cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash. Since then, Bitcoin Cash has made a retroactive mismatched hard fork upgrade every six months and requires a network-wide upgrade on all Bitcoin Cash clients. While many of these upgrades went relatively smoothly, a conflict within the Bitcoin Cash community in 2018 resulted in a split between Bitcoin Cash (the party that holds the original name) and Bitcoin SV.
Now, two years later (November 15, 12:00 UTC, to be precise), another hard fork upgrade and another dispute within the Bitcoin Cash community may once again cause a coin-split. and BitcoinCash Splitting Tool — Exclusive operation manual for split BCH and BCHA.
What’s the dispute? (And between Who?)
At the heart of the dispute is an upgrade called the Infrastructure Financing Plan (IFP). As a protocol rule, IFP transfers 8 percent of each block of rewards — coins earned by miners — to software projects running on Bitcoin Cash, such as Bitcoin ABC.
According to the Bitcoin ABC team, the IFP — sometimes called the “miner tax” — is determined by a new organization called the Global Network Council, which is made up of big miners and cryptocurrency owners. The Global Network Council is planned to meet for the first time in January 2021, but beyond that, not many details about member selection or the procedure for distributing funds have been disclosed.
Bitcoin Cash Node, a software fork of Bitcoin ABC, is an initiative by various Bitcoin Cash developers and users who oppose IFP, removing the upgrade from their source code.
There are several different reasons why life is controversial. Some reject the upgrade on philosophical grounds because they believe the “miner’s tax” is incompatible with the philosophy and original design of Bitcoin Cash (or Bitcoin). Making less money when miners mine a block, which should cause a reduction in network security mixed power. Other concerns about IFP include a lack of features related to the distribution of funds, and we believe the installation may end by taking advantage of bitcoin ABC more than other customers. Bitcoin ABC’s attempt to force change despite community opposition is also a concern in itself.
Do Hard Forks Include Other Protocol Changes?
Yes, both Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Node will provide a new difficulty adjustment algorithm.
New Bitcoin Cash blocks (such as Bitcoin blocks) should be available on average every 10 minutes. But because Bitcoin Cash shares a mining algorithm with bitcoin, some Bitcoin miners sometimes move to Bitcoin Cash mining when the blockchain is more profitable than mine. Since Bitcoin Cash usually has only a small portion of Bitcoin’s mixed power, such a transition causes large fluctuations in the amount of hash power in Bitcoin Cash.
This results in periodic explosions where blocks are found multiple faster every 10 minutes, followed by difficulty la jump. The switching miners then return to bitcoin mining, leaving the original Bitcoin Cash miners behind in a chain that is now less profitable. In addition, a sharp drop in mixed power tends to result in a much slower rate of block production. Mixed power shifts make transaction approval speed reliable in Bitcoin Cashless.
To help stabilize block production speed, the Bitcoin ABC team initially proposed a new difficulty adjustment algorithm called Grasberg. Grasberg will include an additional charge, however: block production will deliberately “slow down for several years to correct the historical drift.” (For several reasons, including the previous difficulty algorithm, Bitcoin Cash blocks have been removed faster than originally planned so far.)
However, the additional historic drift correction has proved controversial within the Bitcoin Cash community. This, in fact, was the original motivation behind the launch of the Bitcoin Cash Node, which includes an alternative difficulty adjustment algorithm called ASERT. (ASERT is also new, although was previously and initially rejected by the Bitcoin ABC team.)
However, the Bitcoin ABC team eventually agreed to implement ASERT and dropped Grasberg. This means that Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash Node will be compatible with the exception of IFP.
Why has Bitcoin ABC published two versions of the software client?
Late last week, Bitcoin ABC announced it would release two versions of Bitcoin ABC. A version of the software implements the IFP protocol rule as planned. Another version, however, will not and therefore will be fully compatible with Bitcoin Cash Node.
However, the Bitcoin ABC team will only work to implement its development roadmap on the version of their software that enforces the IFP protocol rule. (This roadmap includes a flexible block size limit and reduces the risk of duplicate unconfirmed transactions, among other things.) The version without the IFP protocol rule is kept minimally kept to remain compatible with Bitcoin Cash Node without further improvements.
