BCH re-forks, NODE development team confronts ABC
Editor's Note: This article comes fromHoneycomb Finance News (ID: fengchao-caijing), Author: Kyle, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
Editor's Note: This article comes from
Honeycomb Finance News (ID: fengchao-caijing)
Honeycomb Finance News (ID: fengchao-caijing)
, Author: Kyle, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
Another fork of BCH exposed the differences between the core development team BCH ABC and BCH Node to the public. The former is well known to the outside world because of the fork in 2018, and is the main development team of BCH. The latter was born in February this year and was established due to opposition to BCH ABC’s IFP (Infrastructure Financial Plan), initiated by Freetrader, an early developer of BCH.
In February of this year, BCH ABC announced the IFP plan, requiring miners to share 8% of their income with their technical teams as a development fund. This move caused intense controversy in overseas communities. Freetrader and others chose to "stand on their own" and support the BCH without IFP version.
Since the divergence has fermented, forks have become inevitable. According to a person in the BCH community, most of the Chinese community remains neutral, while in the western community, BCH Node has gained more support. The futures performance of the two forked coins on the exchange CoinEx also seems to illustrate this point. The price of BCHN is more than 9 times that of BCHA (BCH ABC).
The confrontation between the two camps will push the BCH community to a split, and it will also make some community members feel discouraged about the future of BCH.
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Exchanges prepare for the BCH fork first
After two years, BCH, the "Prince" of Bitcoin, has once again reached a fork.
In November 2018, BCHABC and BCHSV put up a big battle in a battle of computing power. This hard fork took the lead in attracting attention from the exchange or market level. How to name the two chains and assets this time It is also a topic of concern to users who hold BCH.
On October 28, OKEx took the lead in releasing an announcement on the BCH fork event handling plan. The announcement stated that BCH is expected to undergo a hard fork on November 15. Currently, there are two node plans: BCH ABC and BCH Node (BCHN). , users who held BCH before the fork may obtain two new assets due to the separation of the two chains.
This is a more popular term in the currency circle called "dividing sugar". Due to the market uncertainty that may be caused by the fork, OKEx will suspend the C2C currency issuance and trading function of BCH on November 8th. At the same time, BCH contracts, loans, mining pools and other businesses have corresponding emergency adjustments.
This time, some exchanges have made preparations for the convenience of user identification. OKEx clearly stated in the announcement that after the fork is completed, the platform will refer to the transaction prices of forked currency pairs on major exchanges, select the chain with the higher price to inherit the name of BCH, and the tokens of the other chain will be airdropped at a ratio of 1:1. to the user fund account.
Immediately afterwards, Huobi issued an announcement supporting the potential fork upgrade of BCH on October 30. Similar to the method adopted by OKEx, Huobi will suspend BCH currency trading, leveraged trading and other businesses on the eve of the fork.
In terms of naming, Huobi is slightly different from OKEx. Huobi stated that since there is no fair naming standard for BCH fork in the current BCH community, Huobi will set a transition period for the fork. After the community forms a BCH naming consensus, Huobi will end the transition period and rename the two forked coins. Before the name change, the two forked coins were named BCHA (BCH ABC) and BCHN.
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BCHN "futures" price higher than BCHA
If you look at this futures price, the signal to be optimistic about BCHN is very obvious. Jiang Zhuoer, a BCH supporter and founder of LeBit Mining Pool, interpreted this on Weibo, "The price ratio of BCHN to BCHA is about 9:1, so there is no suspense." He said that the BCH fork solved a problem— —The development team is not BCH, the community is BCH, even if it is the main development team, it cannot violate the consensus of the community, otherwise it will be abandoned by the community.
The main development team mentioned by Jiang Zhuoer is obviously the better-known BCH ABC team. Judging from his statement, ABC seems to be being abandoned by the community.
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If it weren't for this fork event, I am afraid that few people would know that there is still a BCHNode (BCHN) development team in the BCH community. In fact, this development team has not been established for a long time. According to public information, BCHN was established in February 2020 and is a new force in the BCH community.
According to its official Weibo, all of BCHN's current income comes from donations, about half of which are raised through the BCH financing platform Flipstarter. Major donors include overseas investor Marc de Mesel and developer Georg Engelmann.
As can be seen in an official promotional video of BCHN, the team is mainly composed of overseas technology developers, including BCHN initiator and chief maintenance officer Freetrader, maintenance and development staff sickpig, Calin Culianu, developer BigBlock If True, etc.
Among them, Freetrader and sickpig are the early developers of BCH. In a public interview, Freetrader stated that he participated in the development of the Bitcoin ABC client together with Amaury Séchet (the chief developer of BCH ABC) and others in 2017, and worked with other nodes to formulate the BCH upgrade specification.
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Main members of the BCHN team
The person in charge of the market in the BCHN community revealed that BCHN is responsible for maintaining the BCH full node software, website and infrastructure. The short-term goal is to establish a professional mining node, to ensure that the development of the network is not hindered, and to provide stable upgrades needed by all walks of life. The specific work tasks include sorting out and analyzing the existing BCH difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) and providing alternatives, investigating the bottlenecks of existing software in various situations on the unconfirmed transaction chain, providing a more reliable test network and related infrastructure, and establishing an ecosystem Circle communication mechanism, etc.
"BCHN's long-term goal is to support BCH's progress towards electronic cash. BCH must remain license-free, useful, and affordable for everyone." The above-mentioned person told Honeycomb Finance.
It appears that BCHN's vision aligns with the long-stated goals of BCH ABC. So why did the differences arise? Why is the BCH community facing split again? This needs to start with a previous announcement issued by BCH ABC.
In February of this year, BCH ABC released the IFP (Infrastructure Finance Plan) on its official website, in which the ABC team asked miners to share 8% of their income with their technical team as a development fund. This policy sparked a strong backlash.
At the BCH 2020 Developer Conference, Amaury Séchet said that the emergence of IFP is due to repeated requests from the Chinese community, which is not very controversial in China, but it is quite different in the West.
Freetrader of the BCHN team and others are the main opponents of the IFP plan. They jointly formed BCHN and removed the Infrastructure Funding Plan (IFP) from the code base. A BCHN team member stated that the actual desire to form BCHN is to unite the BCH ecosystem and avoid damaging splits.
The IFP plan was indeed shelved for a time because of this, but the BCH ABC team released the upgrade guide after 2 months in September, which clearly stated that the upgrade will introduce IFP coinbase rules. The team also emphasized that this does not mean that miners will lose 8% of their income. Due to the difficulty adjustment, mining income will only decrease by 0.2%. Even so, the IFP faces opposition.
"Introducing such a tax, no matter what people call it, will lead to many new problems, such as conflicts of interest, inhibiting the development of BCH through a central point, etc." Opponents of BCH ABC believe that IFP violates decentralization In spirit, anyone who believes in freedom and the principles of Bitcoin should reject this provision decisively.
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Who will get the title of BCH?
BCHN market participants told Honeycomb Finance that short-term forks are likely to occur due to the behavior of BCH ABC. It seems that the second fork of BCH seems inevitable.
According to a person in the BCH community, in the domestic community, most people maintain a neutral view on the fork, including CoinEx and ViaBTC mining pool CEO Yang Haipo, who tweeted on August 23 that ViaBTC and CoinEx will remain neutral.
However, in the western community, most BCHers do not agree with ABC’s move, including Roger Ver, a BCH supporter. There are even members of the BCH community posting, hoping that the chief developer of ABC, Amaury, will step down. It is worth mentioning that in addition to ABC and BCHN, BCH has other active development groups, one of the main teams is Bitcoin Unlimited, and they also oppose the IFP. From the price comparison between BCHA and BCHN on CoinEx, the BCHN camp has taken the lead.
So, if the fork actually happens, which party will eventually get the name of BCH?
The above-mentioned BCHN market person said that the naming of BCH is granted by the ecosystem and all users, and BCHN will keep the ecosystem as united as possible to maintain the value of BCH and its network effect. The implication is that the ownership of the BCH name still needs to be determined by community consensus.
Another group closely related to the BCH fork is investors in the secondary market.
PayPal financial researchers believe that the benefit of hard forks is that users can participate in the distribution of "candy". Before BTC forked out of BCH, the community didn't seem very happy. However, some people still look forward to this BCH fork, because it can bring about a hoarding effect like BTC.
