Will Bitcoin Cash Undergo A Hard Fork?

Bitcoin cash, which was created by splitting bitcoin’s blockchain, might itself undergo a split. According to reports, fights and disagreements among the cryptocurrency’s developers are threatening to cleave its blockchain. 

Two bitcoin cash software clients – Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV – are the main players in this debate. The cast of characters debating changes to Bitcoin Cash’s blockchain features some familiar names. For example, Craig Wright, an Australian scientist who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, is leading the charge against changes to bitcoin cash’s code. Jihan Wu of Bitmain, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency mining company which mines a substantial portion of bitcoin cash, is also a major player. At stake are several planned upgrades which will determine bitcoin cash’s future course. (See also: Bitcoin Vs. Bitcoin Cash: What's The Difference?)

The Atomic Swap Debate

The most prominent such upgrade relates to atomic swaps. Atomic swaps enable conversions between cryptocurrencies by enabling them to move between blockchains. Bitcoin ABC, a bitcoin cash client, announced the initiative in its latest release recently. However, bitcoin cash’s biggest miner has said that it will not commit hash power (system resources required to mine cryptocurrencies) for the initiative. Recent mining data for bitcoin cash indicates that CoinGeek has more than a third of total mining power assigned to bitcoin. 

CoinGeek founder Calvin Ayre is a supporter of Wright, who is a founder at nChain technologies, and supports Bitcoin SV, a forked implementation of bitcoin cash. In the post announcing Bitcoin SV, the developer team behind the initiative claimed that the fork was intended to carry Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision. “Bitcoin SV is intended to provide a clear bitcoin cash implementation choice for miners who support bitcoin's original vision, over implementations that seek to make unnecessary changes to the original bitcoin protocol,” they wrote.

Not everyone is convinced, however. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin compared Bitcoin SV to Bitconnect, a Ponzi scheme of a cryptocurrency.

According to a Coindesk report, veteran Bitcoin Cash developers are wary of both sides and said that they are “acting out.” "Both ABC and nChain are trying to hard fork. Both of them are not giving any rationale why. Both of them are completely not responsive to any feedback or any compromise requests from the rest of the ecosystem," stated bitcoin classic lead developer Thomas Zander. 

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