Bitcoin ABC is the majority node implementation for the BCH blockchain, all the current talk is for a hashing war – but according to network data from coin.dance, 98% of companies surveyed explicitly support or are prepared for the Bitcoin ABC Roadmap.
It must be noted that the 98% figure drops down to 62% support for ABC, when you discount the company weightings given by coin.dance. Coinbase and Binance are heavily weighted due to there respective web presence and influence in the space.
Two sides of consensus
Bitcoin Cash is due for a scheduled hard fork on 15th November. At the moment it seems like the Bitcoin SV implementation (led by Craig Wright) is due to break away from the consensus rules in a move to be the ‘real’ Bitcoin Cash (or real Bitcoin if you ask Craig). Craig has support from Calvin Ayre, who has already declared to support a hashing war at the time of the split.
On the other side, you have the Bitcoin ABC implementation that is supported by the likes of Bitcoin.com and Bitmain. This implementation seems to have the majority of community consensus, but don’t underestimate the vast reserves of hash power and coins (more than one million BCH) that could be brought into play if a hashing or exchange war erupts.
Some have even speculated that Jihan could be prepared to point some of his sha-256 mining operations away from BTC and towards BCH-ABC to cause mayhem with a covert fork re-org operation.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalic Buterin has called this as a good opportunity to get Craig Wright out of the Bitcoin community. Wright labelled Vitalic as a fraud during a recent crypto conference in Korea.
2000 nodes
According to data from coin.dance, there are currently more than 2000 nodes running the Bitcoin Cash protocol. The majority of the nodes are running either the Bitcoin ABC or Bitcoin Unlimited implementation but we have now seen a number of nodes appear running the Bitcoin SV implementation. Currently there are around 135 Bitcoin SV nodes but this number has been growing rapidly.
1/ NEWS: Ahead of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork, we are opening pre-fork trading of the two planned protocol upgrades, Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV. Learn more here: https://t.co/KitP8N4tCf pic.twitter.com/RcDBke6DLP
— Poloniex Exchange (@Poloniex) November 8, 2018
Fork market
Circle-backed Poloniex has announced a futures fork market. At the time of writing the market currently heavily trades in favour of the ABC, with the respective prices for BCH, BCH-ABC and BCH-SV trading at $595, $520 and $80 respectively.
It’s interesting to note that the ratio traded between the forks is 85% and 15%. It’s not certain yet that a fork will happen but this ratio gives an indication to potential hashing power on each side of the fork.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.