TL;DR: “I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago: resigning my BU membership,” prominent Bitcoin Cash (BCH) developer Amaury Séchet announced in a blog post. He is the second member to resign from the Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) development team recently, following Antony Zegers last week. Both believe BU is too indifferent as a group to a controversial lawsuit against developers, and find the remaining influence of anti-BCH devs within BU toxic.

More Spice: Bitcoin ABC Lead Developer Amaury Séchet: Post Fork, Lawsuit, BCH’s Future

Amaury Séchet Leaves Bitcoin Unlimited

Developer “Antony ‘Mengerian’ Zegers recently decided to resign from Bitcoin Unlimited,” Séchet explained. “He was one of the first to join, and certainly one of the most important members BU has had. This departure led me to reconsider my involvement in BU, as a member.”

Why I am Leaving Bitcoin Unlimited is a quick, pointed lament from a man many consider to have been a driving force in the only successful contentious hard fork of the world’s first cryptocurrency. Amaury Séchet, as lead developer for Bitcoin ABC, is also often referred to as the creator of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). And while he and those more technically literate smile at the suggestion, it’s not too far gone to at least concede Séchet to be responsible for helping make BCH a viable, longer-term project.

Full node implementation for Bitcoin Core (BTC) and BCH, Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) and its team were catalysts for that fork summer of 2017, allowing voices to be heard concerned about scaling with regard to block size increase — a critical debate, as it turned out. Indeed, BU remains an integral part of the BCH ecosystem, counting among its remaining members prominent developers.

Resistance, Vulnerabilities

Séchet insists his “motivation has always been the same: to help create sound money that is convenient and usable for the whole world.” He refers back to joining BU as the first time publicly contributing to Bitcoin’s protocol.

However, “It was quickly apparent to me that there were serious problems with the development process,” Séchet recalls, “and I wasn’t the only one who saw things this way. I decided to provide support on that front, but unfortunately, I was met with resistance,” and he listed a series of faults, including what he described as four “vulnerabilities.”

He would eventually help establish Bitcoin ABC, also a full node implementation of the Bitcoin Cash protocol, “created in order to power what would become Bitcoin Cash.” It appears he believed “Bitcoin Unlimited would improve, and who knows, maybe even Bitcoin ABC would become unnecessary. Or so I thought.” Séchet describes Zegers, who recently resigned from BU, as “one of the first to join, and certainly one of the most important members BU has had,” and how Zegers leaving seemed to be the right time for a show of solidarity.

Suing Developers, Complacency

Among Zegers’ reasons for leaving include an infamous lawsuit most observers believe to be little more than veiled Bitcoin SV (BSV) sour grapes or worse. Séchet is named in the suit, as CoinSpice documented late last year, and he discussed its impact on a subsequent podcast episode.

BSV forked from BCH in November of 2018, and its public heads remain dedicated to cheering such lawsuits along with continually threatening similar strategies. “Today, BU membership is composed of numerous BSV supporters. Not only some of them think that suing developers (including myself) providing open source software for free is good, but many are openly hostile to Bitcoin Cash,” Séchet detailed. He referred to BU’s governance model as “a sad joke, with proposals more and more absurd being voted on.”

He characterized BU leadership as “complacent” and “backstabbing,” revelations he admits came only “after taking a break and looking back.” He thanked Zegers “for having the courage to stand up for what is right,” and emphasized the importance of the Bitcoin Cash community protecting itself “from people and groups attempting to take advantage of its cooperative nature and undermine the project.”

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