ABC Developers Might Consider Changing Bitcoin Cash PoW Algorithm

The Bitcoin Cash “inner crisis” might grow into a blockchain split in few days’ time. The lead developer of the minority hashrate faction has aired his opinion, saying that the community should “get a patch ready” especially in the instance that there is need to obtain an emergency hard fork to alter the virtual currency’s Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm.

Bitcoin ABC Dev. Open to ‘Nuclear Option’

Amaury Séchet, Bitcoin ABC lead developer and self-described Bitcoin Cash “benevolent dictator,” took to his Twitter handle to write about the subject. He wrote that an attempt to initiate an emergency fork to alter the Bitcoin Cash hashing algorithm would amount to a “nuclear option.” However, the developers cannot totally do away with this as it would be a viable option if their version of Bitcoin Cash (BCHSV) suffers an attack from miners backing Bitcoin SV (BCHSV), the BCH version promoted by Craig Wright and billionaire Calvin Ayre.

According to Séchet when a question of whether or not he supported a PoW change was posed, he said;

“You should get a patch ready. It’s better to be ready and not need it than to need it and not be ready,” he further stated that “Changing PoW is somewhat of a nuclear option so I’d be reluctant to use it. But it always has been considered the option of last resort in case a large portion of miner become hostile, so we should be ready.”

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As it stands now, despite strong community and business support, the hashrate has (at least in the days leading up to the fork) largely rallied behind BCHSV. The SV camp seems to possess the dominant hashrate, with Coin Dance estimating that about 75 to 80 percent of miners are signalling for SV compared to just ~15 to 27 percent for ABC.

Also, earlier this month, Craig Wright made a claim in an email Bitcoin creator Satoshi (a claim he quickly refuted). He has noted that SV miners will definitely use their hash power to attack BCHABC blockchain. Meanwhile, other SV backers have issued this warning as well.