Two days ago I was watching the virtual global Bitcoin Cash meet-up in which Mark Lamb explained smartBCH. He did a great job explaining the project and I can only recommend watching the entire video.
While watching I got super excited about smartBCH. So excited that I decided to do what everyone tells you to do but hardly anybody actually does: I started doing my own research 🤯 - and right now I have just had a first look at the smartBCH white paper.
As I said, initially, I was very excited about smartBCH. However, there are a few things which I believe could have been done better. These things have less to do with technical improvements - in fact, I believe that the smartBCH team is very knowledgeable and capable in that field. I believe some of the game theory regarding the initial adoption could have been done better - or maybe it can still be improved?
So, first of all, let me give you a very brief explanation of what smartBCH actually is and then let me do what I do best in life: bitch and moan give constructive criticism. 😅
smartBCH is an EVM and Web3.0 compatible block chain. As such it can be viewed as an alternative to Ethereum which features many technical improvements. SmartBCH utilises the decentralization of the Bitcoin Cash network. Therefore, it is a side-chain of Bitcoin Cash. That basically means that smartBCH is pretty much its own separate block chain which is built on top of the Bitcoin Cash network. smartBCH follows a philosophy which is very similar to the one underlying BCH. Bitcoin Cash is uncensorable, borderless, easy payments for everybody and for every day. And smartBCH is the same for DeFi.
Ok, ok. That may have been a bit much at once. So for those who need more explanations, stay tuned for my upcoming article in which I explain the above mumbo jumbo in newbie friendly language.
In this article I assume that you either understood my brief explanation - or that you already knew what smartBCH is anyway.
And let me continue with what I love about smartBCH:
I am super excited about affordable DeFi. I believe that this could - and hopefully will - be huge.
I am super confident in the technical capabilities of the team behind smartBCH.
I love the philosophy behind smartBCH.
Alright, let's now begin the constructive criticism:
Is smartBCH a test net where I risk real BCH?
When I read the conclusion of the white paper, I was a bit puzzled. It reads:
The Smart Bitcoin Cash, to a large extent, can be viewed as a demo and an experiment of the novel and aggressive techniques we have been developing, which aim to optimize storage and execution engines for extreme throughput. Just like other open-source projects, there might be bugs and vulnerabilities in its design and implementation. So please be aware of the potential risks and make sure that possible losses are affordable when transferring your assets (including BCH) onto the Smart Bitcoin Cash.
Thinking about this paragraph a bit more I came to the conclusion that the team wants to be super careful and honest.
If that's the case, then I believe this paragraph should have been labeled "Disclaimer" and somewhere in there, it should have been pointed out that the same dangers are true for all blockchains.
And yes, I get it. Nobody cares about testnets and you basically have to deploy valuable coins and battle-test the network in the real world at some point.
Why no airdrop?
Alright, alright. I admit it. I would love some free coins. And I believe that many other people in the cryptosphere love free coins, too.
Therefore, I believe a lot of buzz for smartBCH and for BCH could have been generated if there was an airdrop for people who hold BCH on-chain. If this airdrop was announced one month in advance, this could not only create a lot of buzz for smartBCH, it would have also created a lot of buzz for BCH.
And I know, the idea is that people will switch from Ethereum to smartBCH because of the fees - and from BSC to smartBCH because of the decentralisation. And then this will create some buzz for BCH - maybe. I still think that my suggestion is game-theoretically superior, though. 😅 (Feel free to disagree - and tell me why I'm wrong in the comments if you do.)
This is a consequence of point 2: Don't use BCH as gas.
I get it. Burning half the fees on smartBCH and consequently burning the corresponding BCH on main net is bullish for the BCH price. And locking the BCH on main net is also bullish for the price.
However, this 1:1 relationship between BCH on smartBCH and BCH on mainnet makes an airdrop very expensive - or actually pretty much impossible.
If smartBCH used its own new token as gas and allowed the price to fluctuate freely, an airdrop would be possible. And the same bullish effects for the BCH price could be achieved if every payment to the bridge would be converted to BCH which would then be locked. By that, I mean that all other crypto would be exchanged for BCH and the BCH would be locked in the bridge - if that is indeed what is intended.
The airdrop could give a small amount of the new smartBCH token to BCH holders (maybe 1/1,000 the amount in smartBCH as they hold in BCH) and a tiny amount to holders of other coins (for instance 1/1,000,000 the amount of ETH). The idea behind the airdrop is to give people a "freemium" amount of coins to get them interested in the project and to get them to try the project. And in the best case scenario they are teased enough to actually buy some tokens.
The biggest airdrop in history.
Alright, I admit it. This idea is based on what the Pulse Chain is planning to do. And they are doing it quite successfully, I might add.
However, smartBCH is further along and could beat Pulse at their own game.
Pulse starts with the entire Ethereum system state. One consequence is that all the ERC-20 coins will be available right away on Pulse. This created a really big buzz for Pulse - leading to many people "sacrificing" quite a lot of crypto to Richard Heart - the man behind the Pulse Chain project - who promised a clever and fair airdrop mechanism to those who send him their crypto as a "sacrifice". He got a lot of sacrifices sent to him (- just to send himself a ton of crypto and become the biggest benefactor of his own airdrop in the last few hours of the sacrifice phase. 😂🙈)
My point is: "The largest airdrop in history" definitely created some buzz. SmartBCH may use that to their advantage - if the technical optimisations don't make it impossible to copy smart contracts over from. Ethereum to smartBCH.
Ok, thank you for reading this article. I hope you found it useful or interesting. And stay tuned for my beginner introduction to smartBCH - which I will publish in the future.
And let me know what you think about smartBCH and about my criticism.
Because the gas fee in the smartBCH network is paid with SEP20 BCH, which has to be exchanged 1:1 with real BCH. The fees are not paid with a new token. Where will the BCH for the airdrop come from? Who is going to give it?