The Bitcoin Cash blockchain is seemingly going to avoid a potential chain split that could have occurred over a controversial “miner tax” proposal that divided the cryptocurrency community.
The proposal was first made by the CEO of major cryptocurrency mining pool BTC.TOP, Jiang Zhuoer, and would see miners donate 12.5% of their block rewards to BCH’s developers to grow its infrastructure. It added, however, that those who didn’t donate would see their blocks get orphaned.
The community’s response to the proposal later saw the CEO of Bitcoin.com, Roger Ver, drop support for it over the risk of a chain split. Jiang Zhuoer himself, later on, dropped support for the proposal and said he would use his 3,500 PH/s of hashrate to vote against the proposal.
Bitcoin ABC, the dominant Bitcoin Cash node client, has however, added support for the proposed “tax,” which could be activated if miners representing a specific amount of the hashrate signal support for it.
For now, Support for the proposals appear to be low, but there is still a chain split risk of miners choose to vote for it. In response, developers created the Bitcoin Cash Node client, which is an initiative that will “neutrally follow the longest Bitcoin Cash chain without contributing to the risk of a chain split.”
Other nodes have claimed they will switch to Bitcoin Unlimited, another node client that hasn’t added support for the proposal. An anonymous group of miners supposedly representing 1.6 EH/s of the hash rate threatened to launch a hash war that could have also led to a chain split over the tax.
The Bitcoin Cash network, it’s worth noting, is I a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain, and has endured a chain split in November 2018, when Bitcoin SV was created.
