Hash Wars: A Successful BCH Upgrade and a 'High Risk' Exchange Listing

It’s been close to four days since the Bitcoin Cash upgrade and the blockchain split that occurred on Nov. 15. Since the acrimonious fork, a lot has happened within the BCH ecosystem including a few exchanges listing both chains as separate coins.

Also Read: Another ‘Satoshi Message’ Attempts to Sway Public Opinion, But Fails

Bitcoincash.org States Upgrade Was a Success

The Nov. 15 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hash war has been quite the spectacle for many cryptocurrency observers to say the least. Almost four days have passed since the split and both chains are being mined by separate mining entities. On Monday the Bitcoincash.org website published an announcement to the public detailing that the “planned network upgrade is complete.”

The website stated that the proposed features developed by the Bitcoin ABC team integrated successfully and the upgrade contained multiple new functionalities. Highlights from the fork include the introduction of canonical transaction ordering (CTOR), and the enabled OP_CHECKDATASIG and OP_CHECKDATASIGVERIFY opcodes. Additionally, there’s an added enforced minimum transaction size, a “push only” rule for script-Sig, and automatic replay protection for future upgrades.

“CTOR which is part of the comprehensive technical roadmap allows for faster transaction ordering and block propagation — This feature helps scale Bitcoin Cash for the world,” the announcement detailed.

The Bitcoincash.org website continued by stating:

OP_CHECKDATASIGVERIFY which is also part of the roadmap, is a feature that allows a transaction to verify that it has been supplied with a valid signature and message — This will enable new applications to be built on the Bitcoin Cash network that wasn’t possible before.

In addition, the organization explained the developers’ reasoning behind the added checkpoint. Bitcoincash.org’s fork notice states that a “malicious entity may have tried to attack the chain with deep reorgs.” In order to prevent an attack, the programmers used a tactic utilized by Satoshi Nakamoto in the early days of Bitcoin development. “Checkpoints have been used in every past Bitcoin Cash network upgrade including this Nov. 15 upgrade,” the developers added.

Voltaire, Kraken, Coinex, and the Wait for More Exchanges

In addition to the announcement on Monday published on Bitcoincash.org, a few exchanges have started revealing chain listing announcements. For instance, the BCH-centric trading platform Voltaire announced on Nov. 18 that it would be listing the ABC side of the chain as bitcoin cash (BCH). The exchange is working to enable deposits and withdrawals for the SV network and will introduce a new BSV/BCH trading pair market.

“As per Voltaire’s policy to support Nakamoto Consensus, we’ll be listing the ABC chain under the BCH ticker and all future pairs (ETH, GUSD, LTC) will be paired likewise,” explained Voltaire in a blog post on Sunday.

The same day, the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken also revealed its decision regarding the split outcome. Kraken had a lot more to say about the contentious Bitcoin Cash hard fork, with the trading platform detailing that Bitcoin ABC will be listed as Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and they will list the other side as BSV. Kraken has warned customers that the SV chain does not meet the company’s traditional listing requirements for a variety of reasons including the fact that it has “no known wallets supporting replay protection, miners are operating at a loss, and representatives threatening and openly hostile toward other chains.” Additionally, the exchange said it has completed only a small amount of code review and stressed that “large holders have indicated they’d be dumping everything.”

Kraken added:

Custodial losses taken on due to attacks originating from Nchain or its affiliates will be socialized among all BSV holders on Kraken — Given the volatile state of the network and threats that have been made, Kraken cannot guarantee perfect custody of BSV.

Further, the BCH pairs exchange Coinex has revealed it will be listing two markets with ABC commanding the BCH ticker. Coinex has also added BCHSV/BCH, BCHSV/BTC trading pairs on the exchange. Even though a few trading platforms have re-opened BCH markets, Bitcoin Cash proponents are hoping more exchanges will re-enable BCH transactions in the near future. Meanwhile, other market participants have been searching for safe methods and tools to split their coins.

What do you think about the hash war? Do you think it is close to over? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Images via Shutterstock, Pixabay, Kraken logo, Voltaire Logo, and Bitcoincash.org.

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