As we get closer to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain contentious hard fork, scheduled for November 15, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC, the community as well as the hashpower, are pointing to BCHN as the dominant chain.
This fork was a scheduled routine update, though it is being contested by the BCHA node implementation, proposing to impose an 8% developer tax on the miners’ block rewards. BCHN will proceed with the proposed routine update and will not support the block reward tax.
BitGo’s Prediction
BitGo is one of the oldest companies in the digital asset industry and we have helped our clients manage prior forks. We do not believe that this fork is similar to the 2017 BCH fork or the 2018 BSV fork. This fork, by contrast, does not appear to have support to survive. As of this writing, BCHN, which will continue the existing BCH consensus, has over 75% of miner support; BCHA, the instigator of the fork has less than 1% miner support; and about 24% is so far undecided. We believe that most of the undecided miners will only follow the existing chain (BCHN) and that there is effectively no chance for BCHA to have any productive life or value. We hope that the BCHA team decides to call off the potential fork before it happens, but even if they do not, we see a very low chance of a surviving chain.
BitGo’s Approach to Handling the Fork
Our primary goal is to ensure the safety of client funds and to support our client through this imposed uncertainty by supporting the dominant chain after the fork. At the moment, BitGo is running the BCHN client and predicts this implementation to be the dominant side of the fork, given the community’s support and the signaling of the network hashpower as mentioned above.
That said, we will follow whatever path the market takes and put our clients’ interest first. Note that BitGo led the industry back in 2017 with the first contentious hard fork and wrote about what a hard fork needs to consider in order to be “safe”. The technical details outlined at that time still apply 100% today, and apply to this fork as well. Unfortunately, the BCHA team is proposing an unsupportable hard fork. If this branch does survive, it will take time for BitGo, as well as all other wallet providers and custodians, to accumulate safe “coinbase coins” (or block rewards) to manually implement replay protection.
We will be shutting down all BCH services 12 hours prior to the fork on Sunday, November 15, 2020 at 12:00:00 AM UTC.
As always, feel free to contact us at support@bitgo.com for clarification or questions.
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