I have spent the better part of the night trying to catch up on all the controversy about the Bitcoin ABC's IFP plan. Trying to understand both sides of the debate. The passion one way or the other truly shows just how much the community cares about the project and their beliefs.
While reading through flipping back and forth something occurs to me or maybe it was what someone said. So now, I have a question for the community. Would it be possible to let ABC have their 8% fee while other node developers give theirs away for free? Without causing a split?
If it is possible why not just do it this way? What would then happen is ABC gets funding it wants without having to rely on donations. You could see it as a charge on miners who make money off mining BCH using BitcoinABC's software. Let the miners choose the software they want. If they don't want to pay 8% of their mining rewards they can go use any other node software.
Could it be a win/win?
BitcoinABC would get to be funded in a method it wants
BCH would not have to split
Miners choose if they want to pay a fee for their node software if not they can move to another implementation
Everyone still gets to use all the tools that have been built the last 3 years
BitcoinABC wouldn't have an excuse to not hire developers to work on things like avalanche, removing the chain limit
If BitcoinABC does't fulfill what it says then they will lose the miners to other node providers and BitcoinABC fades away because they will have no funding support anyone.
It incentivizes BitcoinABC to make the best node software possible which benefits everyone
Not possible
If it is not possible then sorry for wasting your time. I know there are ways to not make it possible but let's try to have an open mind and if it is possible maybe we should make it happen.
I expect ABC will require all blocks donate the 8% of the reward to BCH development. Letting some not do it makes it unfair to those who do fund development. That's the "free riders" problem we currently have.