- Bitcoin Cash has split into two new blockchain following a hard fork
- The chain is split into BCHN and BCH ABC due to disagreement over the “miner tax”.
- Almost all nodes favor BCHN and BCH ABC has attracted little to no horsepower.
A Bitcoin Cash fork has once again split the blockchain into two new blockchains due to disagreement over the proposed upgrade.
The upgrade proposed by Bitcoin Cash (BCH) developer group BCH ABC was opposed by another group called Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN). As some nodes went through with the hard fork while others did not, the blockchain was split into two separate chains.
Bitcoin Cash fork
The recent Bitcoin Cash fork was an action that took place because of the previous hard fork of the network. Bitcoin Cash developers, known as BCH ABC, proposed an update on the blockchain that included a miner tax. The miners would pay 8 percent of their mined BCH to be distributed to BCH ABC for protocol development.
However, the community had a split reaction regarding this as another group opposed the decision. The group, known as Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN), removed this miner tax from their source code.
When nodes on a network implement an update (a fork) while other nodes do not, the blockchain splits into two. Unlike a soft fork that allows transactions between both upgraded and non-upgraded nodes, the hard fork completely splits them off. As such, developers tend to be conservative regarding hard-forks.
What’s next?
From the beginning, most of the nodes showed support for the BCHN network. In fact, data suggests that 80 percent of all nodes signaled support for BCHN while only 0.3 percent supported BCH ABC while 19 percent did not signal support for any side.
Statistics show that BCH ABC has accounted for 0 blocks in the last thousand blocks mined on the network. Furthermore, the Bitcoin Cash fork accounts for 0 percent of all blocks mined across the last seven days. If the fork does not attract enough hashpower to produce blocks and continue the blockchain, BCH ABC would virtually disappear.
Most major exchanges, including Kraken, are going to support BCHN, which will be represented by the “BCH” ticker.
