Mining tax follow-up: Will BCH split?

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Avatar for mduchow
4 years ago

Bitcoin cash developers still find themselves under crossfire in no man’s land in the midst of furthering a forceful mining tax. This comes after Bitcoin ABC published that they would be including it within their next update, regardless of backlash from a significant part of the community. 

Centralization at its finest

In a similar stance to Bitcoin.com’s original stance (before shifting tones), Bitcoin ABC (a node used by over 50% of the BCH network) has decided to propagate BTC.TOP’s authoritarian decision to control a distributed network. 

In an effort to somehow concede to the dissidents of the decision, they reduced the tax from 12.5% to 5%. While this will slightly ease the burden on miners, the original dissent was in reaction to the ideology and the seemingly orwellian motivations behind such an uncalled for decision. 

The motivations of Bitcoin ABC behind publishing this change, seem to be largely driven by self interest, since they have aligned themselves with the centralized beneficiaries propagating this idea. Alternatively, Bitcoin unlimited sides with those that vehemently dispute the benefits of potentially destroying an established network with greed. 

The irony here lies in their claims of this being for the greater good of the network, while their blogpost seems to imply that the primary beneficiaries will be a minute fraction of the ecosystem, including yours truly, Bitcoin ABC, BCHD, and Electron Cash as the sole recipients of this implementation. An action like this is hilariously self destructive, claiming it’s for the good of the community while selecting an elitist group that get exclusive access to the thievery. They are doing this simply because they can and no one will stop them. The only thing that remains unclear about their self authored eposé is will the miner be able to select who the “donation” goes to? Or will he have that decision made for him as well?

On top of this, Bitcoin ABC’s last upgrade included a code deactivation clause that occurs every six months when the network hard forks. This means even if those running ABC nodes want to skip the hard fork and continue running an earlier version of the client, it will automatically update to the new code which includes the miner tax. 

Meaning the only resolve for this dispute is for the idea to collapse in on itself or for the network to split good. It’s unlikely for the representatives to concede after going so far, so the only option these self proclaimed contrarian developers have left us is to forever damage either 50% of the community or the entire network. Yet some fail to realize the discontent with the idea. 

This decision has even provoked evangelist Roger Ver, although it seems like he has a short span of memory considering he was in support of this movement weeks ago, is now criticizing the decision to try and prevent a fork of the network. 

While I’m not always in agreement with his ideologies, I agree with his statement on this: 

“If miners were truly concerned about funding infrastructure development and maintaining a free market structure, they would have donated off-chain rather than forcing every miner to give away a portion of their reward”


Bitcoin ABC has already committed to the tax, so unless they repeal or miners withdraw their support, it is unlikely to be thwarted. With the community split once again, Bitcoin Cash’s third contentious hard fork may be underway.


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Avatar for mduchow
4 years ago

Comments

As I've said a thousand times: governance governance governance. People will keep splitting the chain over things like this over and over until there's a neat mechanism to represent the network's views and decide on issues once and for all.

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4 years ago

A better solution would be casting a vote for every miner on the network or creating a voluntary donation fund for those who think the network needs further development. As far as simply "maintaining" the network, devs should do that by choice or in the interest of their own investment, not by wage. The answer is not forcefully centralizing a network simply because you have the ability to do so. While it's not a significant issue now, it's a domino effect that won't lead to anywhere that's more beneficial to the network than it is to the central individuals.

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4 years ago

Sorry, but you should correct the article headline, it is wrong on multiple counts.

(article headlines can be corrected easily using the 'Edit' function - it preserves links)

There is no hard fork "imminent" due to the miner fund proposal (which is a soft fork btw). There is a regular upgrade scheduled for May 15 2020 - hardly "imminent", and not out of the ordinary because "hard fork" does not necessarily mean there is going to be a currency split.

It is too early to say how the funding debate will end up, but both sides have shown willingness to listen and try a donation based approach as a first step.

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4 years ago

The title is based on my last post regarding the topic "Will BCH/ZEC fork?" hence the follow up. It's simply an update since my last post.

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4 years ago

There's a cleaner title for you.

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4 years ago

That is much better, thank you for changing it.

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4 years ago