Bitcoin Cash Drama: Battle Lines Drawn Ahead of Scheduled Hard Fork

Controversial and untrusted figure in the Bitcoin Cash community Cobra Bitcoin may prove to be the saving grace for the network's future, after a highly contentious dispute between Bitcoin ABC and nChain threatens to split BCH into competing chains ahead of a scheduled hard fork in November.

Cobra, the anonymous owner of Bitcoin.org and previous critic of Bitcoin Cash, announced the Cobra Client hard fork in a Medium post and dubbed the upgrade a "Safe implementation of the Bitcoin Cash protocol." The proposed upgrade is in response to the "Mostly non-important and non-urgent changes" proposed by major developers Bitcoin ABC and nChain.

Major developers clash over proposed upgrades Bitcoin ABC, the biggest Bitcoin Cash client, initiated the stir in the BCH community after it released version 0.18.0 of its full node Bitcoin Cash implementation on August 20, which included major software changes like canonical transaction ordering and two new operation codes.

Bitcoin ABC's proposal came days after nChain, Craig Wright's Blockchain development firm, announced their own fork of BCH, Bitcoin SV - or Bitcoin Satoshi Vision on August 16.

nChain's Bitcoin SV will increase block size from 32MB to 128MB and reinstate four "Satoshi opcodes" in an effort to restore the original Bitcoin protocol.

Wright opposed the addition of new opcodes and other arbitrary changes to the network and stated nChain would revert to version 0.1.0 implementation in order to preserve long-term stability for BCH. Jihan Wu, Bitmain founder and major supporter of Bitcoin ABC's initial hard fork of Bitcoin in 2017, weighed in on the debate and dismissed Craig Wright's baseless opposition to the fork, calling him a "Fake Satoshi."

Vitalik Non-giver of Ether August 22, 2018 Cobra proposes a compromise to settle the drama Cobra previously caused outrage in the Bitcoin community after suggesting changes to Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper and also suggested changes to the original Bitcoin proof-of-work consensus algorithm, stating a need for more decentralization.

Ideological divisions in BCH community Bitcoin ABC, who is responsible for the original BTC/BCH hard fork in 2017, and Wright were once in unanimous agreement that Bitcoin Cash was Satoshi Nakamoto's 'true vision' for Bitcoin.

The mining poll experienced an increase in its hashrate to 28 percent around the same time of the announcement of Bitcoin SV. Peter Rizun, the chief scientist of Bitcoin Unlimited - a development team accounting for nearly one-third of all full node clients - tweeted his position on the matter, saying Bitcoin ABC should hold off on its plans until more evidence proves its benefits.

The Bitcoin Cash community tuning into the drama is keeping a close eye on mining pools, since miners ultimately cast the vote with their hash power.