TL;DR: Since late last month, after influential mining pool BTC.TOP founder Jiang Zhuoer released an Infrastructure Funding Plan for Bitcoin Cash (IFP), the peer-to-peer electronic cash community debated protocol funding and its finer points, at times heatedly. This resulted in several alternatives to the IFP and, more recently, an update by Zhuoer himself. However, on February 15, 2020, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) reference implementation Bitcoin ABC announced it “will be including [elements of Zhuoer’s updated IFP] in the upcoming 0.21.0 release,” scheduled as part of the May 15, 2020 BCH upgrade.

Bitcoin ABC Will Implement Bitcoin Cash Infrastructure Fund of 5%

According to Bitcoin ABC, four addresses will receive BCH redirected IFP coinbase block rewards: itself, a “General Fund,” wallet and privacy tool project Electron Cash, and implementation BCHD. The Bitcoin ABC IFP for May 15, 2020 lowers the 12.5% block reward redirection figure set in the original IFP, but raises it from Zhuoer’s updated IFP projection of around 2%-3%, to 5%. There was no mention of the $6,000,000 hoped-for fundraising goal over six months as delineated in the original IFP. That goal was based upon a 12.5% take from a $300 BCH price at the time, a price that has risen substantially in recent weeks to more than $400.

“The plan will only go into effect if triggered by miners via [the] BIP-9 like method,” Bitcoin ABC explained, noting miners will have to mine blocks, a ‘vote’ in its favor, for the redirection to take place. “The funds can go to more than one project, and can go to one of several in a whitelist. The whitelist of possible projects was selected according to the following criteria: Must be common infrastructure, things that different products build on top of. The project must provide a ‘Public Good.’ The project must use open source software licenses compatible with other projects in the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. The plan should prioritize projects that are in need of money,” insisting these were why three of the four specifically named projects were whitelisted for May.

TIMELINE THUS FAR

Gone too is any talk of a Hong Kong corporation to distribute IFP collected funds, which appears to have been replaced by a “General Fund” (details of which were not released). There doesn’t appear to be a time limit or sunset clause for the Bitcoin ABC IFP. There isn’t any mention of a Bitcoin Mining Parliament (BMP) in terms of governance, seemingly favored by Zhuoer in his updated IFP. There is no listing of signatories from the original IFP such as Jihan Wu of Bitmain, Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com, nor Haipo Yang of ViaBTC. Bitcoin.com, a relatively small BCH mining pool by comparison, begged off from its initial support of the first IFP, calling for more dialog. Neither implementation Bitcoin Unlimited nor Bitcoin Verde was included in the Bitcoin ABC IFP announcement — both have come out against the original IFP in one form or another.

Bitcoin ABC acknowledged “monitoring community discussion closely, and communicating with Jiang Zhuoer and others in the mining space. As a result of community feedback,” the reference implementation plans to go ahead with its amended IFP heading into the May 15, 2020 scheduled upgrade. Releasing the announcement on February 15th is significant for, in effect, freezing any new upgrade proposals ahead of the May 15, 2020 upgrade.

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