1 This is not the first fork happened in the Blockchain world

In Aug.01 2017, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was born after the hard fork of Bitcoin (BTC) initiated by the Bitcoin-ABC, Via BTC, and BU, some origin core developer team of BTC. This is the first hard fork happened in the blockchain world. Based on the developing roadmap and consensus, BCH would have a hard fork every 6 months. For example, BCH finished the first fork in May based on the consensus without splitting another new coin out, increase the size of a block from 8M to 32M.

2 This hard fork is contentious: origins from the contention of different development philosophies

However, The leading people inside the BCH community, such as Jihan Wu (BitMain)and Craig S.Wright (nChain) had different ideas for the BCH development in the future. Several months ago, CSW put out that the size of a block should be increased to 128M which is disagreed by Jihan Wu. Jihan indicated that the 32M is enough for the current situations and increasing to 128M is not only risky but also lack a strict test. However, the contention between the two groups centered on whether to increase the size of a block is appearance, the intrinsical contention hidden behind it is the development philosophy differentiation. CSW insists that the BCH should be redirected to follow the bitcoin origin consensus but Jihan Wu believes that the BCH should develop to a public blockchain based on 32M like ETH where more scenarios could happen here. The differentiated development philosophies finally resulted in this hard fork.

3. The hard fork is a hash war involved with huge computing power

In this hash war, two sides all put huge computing power to race. BCHABC applied the computing power of BTC to the BCH. Based on the schedule, the difficulties of BTC minding have decreased, respectively, the income of miners are increasing. The difficulties have decreased by 7.39% in the last period and the difficulties are expected to decrease by 7.4%, totally equal to the +15% increase of minding output. In the way, it indicates that the net income of minding would increase by around 50%. In this case, this racing may benefit the miners.

4. From the sixth block, 556767 height, the hard fork start

The competition started on Nov 15. BCHSV and BCHABC put their huge computing power to compete. The first 3 blocks were minded by the BCHSV but the latter two blocks were minded by the BCHABC benefited by the scheduled computing power from BTC. The sixth block was minded by the BCHSV.

The six public blocks minding are a warm-up for this racing. The real hard fork started from the seventh block. The seventh block was minded by two groups simultaneously.

5. The longer chain would retain the BCH label

However, the BCHABC minded the first two blocks under the new consensus rules, which is not consistent with Bitoncoin SV. From now on, the BCH hard forked and the BCHABC is, for the most part, maintained a blockchain that was consistently longer than BSV’s.

Lack of the premise of reply protection, the core element for this competition is speed, where who can build the longer chain, who can maintain the BCH label. As the time of the writing, the BCHABC was 8 blocks ahead of BCHSV.

From coin.dance

6. Posted-Fork Mining Heavily centralized

the original insight of blockchain is uncentralized. However, in this competition, the centralized feature is gradually exposed. The hash power of both sides is centralized, with each network featuring a single mining pool accounting for a majority of blocks mined since the fork. On BSV, this is CoinGeek, who currently has 52.78 percent of the network’s mining power, while Bitcoin.com accounts for 35.42 percent on BCHABC, which is more distributed.

From Coin.dance

7. The competition not end: this would be a long race

This competition has not ended at that night. This would be a long marathon race. Out of expectation, two sides did not attack each other. Instead, they are focusing on minding on their own chain.

The key landmark of success is that they could mind blocks stably and no large number of blocks are recalled. Based on the current situation, the BCHABC could mind faster and more stably, meaning the minding difficulties of ABC is harder, which strengths their defensive ability. But we could not say that the BCHABC has wined since everything may be changed. As CSW said, the game is on.

8. No one wins

Except for the competition self, looking in a larger sense, no one won in this game. For the investors, after a short rising of BCH, it went down continuously. On Nov 15, BCH went down from $6200 to $5720 only within 3 hours. BTC was also influenced by the BCH, dropping down $5600, at the lowest level in 2018. The investors who bought some BCH and wanted to enjoy the benefits of hard fork become the biggest victims.

The two sides are also at a loss. According to BitMEX Research, BSV miners are losing at least $280,000 per day relative to the value of the coins. Meanwhile, BCHABC is currently even more expensive to mine since it has almost twice the difficulty of BSV. Though, neither mining group has the ability to sell their coins until exchanges begin taking BCH deposits. Therefore, all BCH miners are mining at a loss, with the expectation that their support for one chain and allow its coins to return the pre-fork value of bitcoin cash.

In this long race, both sides are affording the huge costs. The focus has turned from which chain is more profitable to which chain is more likely to survive and attract buy support on an exchange. At least, the game is costly, the survivor would be the winner.

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