Does It Make Sense To Mine Bitcoin Cash BCH
Mining Bitcoin Cash doesn’t make much sense right now. If there was a way to dual-mine both BTC and BCH, things would get pretty interesting. What is Bitcoin Cash (BCC/BCH) – How Does It Differ From BTC. For reference, one block yesterday took about 10 hours to mine, compared to the 10 minutes it should. Buy Bitcoin With Credit Card; Mine Bitcoin; Tweet for Bitcoin. What is Bitcoin Cash? Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is an upgraded version of the Bitcoin Core software.
Shares 35 A lot has been said and written in regards to Bitcoin Cash and its unusual mining difficulty algorithm. In a lot of cases, the mining difficulty adjusts in such a way that the altcoin becomes increasingly easy to mine when things go awry. A recent screenshot by Charlie Lee showed how the network sometimes generates dozens of blocks an hour before increasing the mining difficulty again, which in turn may cause network delays. It is certainly true that this may not necessarily represent Satoshi’s vision. Bitcoin Cash’s EDA Still makes Little Sense Whether you love it or hate it, you can’t deny that the adjustment algorithm is a very intriguing creature. More specifically, this EDA can change the mining difficulty rather quickly. In most cases, the difficulty will lower as a way to speed up the network and ensure there is no backlog whatsoever.
Once the mining power picks up again, the difficulty will readjust to increase the network time between blocks. It makes a lot of sense, but can sometimes lead to some odd side effects.
According to a screenshot shared by Litecoin founder Charlie Lee, the EDA may be working too well sometimes. In fact, the image he posted detailed 43 Bitcoin Cash blocks generated over the course of one hour. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, it could be viewed as a problem considering it means over 600 BCH were added to the circulating supply during that time. That rate is pretty alarming, as the erratic changes in time between blocks and rewards could cause some big consequences.
43 BCH blocks an hour. This will last for another day. Then, I expect another round of ~3hr long blocks.
ZClassic ZCL Mining Platforms here. Yup, Satoshi's vision! /s 😂 — Charlie Lee [NO2X] (@SatoshiLite). At the same time, such a “speeding up” of network blocks will eventually lead to a higher mining difficulty.
When that happens, the time in between blocks may go up to several hours, which is less than ideal. This is certainly not the way envisioned the evolution of the Bitcoin network whatsoever. Thankfully, the EDA is something that can be addressed by BCH developers, assuming they will ever be inclined to do so.
One thing that is worth taking into account is how this also influences the profitability of mining Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. A lower difficulty makes it more profitable to mine BCH over BTC, which means the Bitcoin network may struggle with its mempool every now and then.
During times of high BCH difficulty, miners will often switch back to the main Bitcoin blockchain, leaving BCH hanging out to dry. It is far from an ideal situation for both networks; that much is rather evident. Issues with the Bitcoin Cash mining difficulty algorithm have been discussed many times before. So far, the BCH developers don’t see a need to make any major changes, even though changes in block time are a bit erratic at times.
At the time of writing, it is 60.5% more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash than BTC itself. Then again, this has not affected Bitcoin network confirmation times just yet. One of our transactions got three confirmations within 20 minutes, which is pretty quick for a BTC transfer these days.
Moreover, during the writing of this article, we saw a total of 20 BCH blocks being discovered on the network. That is an absurd amount, to say the very least, as some blocks are literally coming twenty seconds apart. It is evident this situation will continue to spark debate moving forward and also speed up the inflation rate of Bitcoin Cash. As a result, the BCH price is taking a sharp nosedive right now, although there is no real reason to panic just yet.
BCH Roadmap Looks Interesting but Strange Now that the network has finally started to stabilize, the time has come to look to the future. That also means coming up with a development roadmap for the foreseeable future. Up to this point, there was no real plan of action, as the stability of the network has always been the main priority. Now that we have a basic idea of what the future will hold, things look very different for Bitcoin Cash. That being said, the proposed concepts will raise a lot of questions from the overall community.
Bitcoin ABC main developer Amaury Sechet a rather interesting change. He argues that the BCH network must continue increasing its transaction capacity. The BCH block size limit already sits at 8MB. That means the network can, in theory, process a lot more transactions compared to Bitcoin itself. So far, very few of these network blocks have been over 1MB in size, mainly because there is no demand for more transaction throughput right now. Sechet proposes that this transaction throughput be pursued aggressively by introducing new hard forks on a regular basis. A can always lead to a network split if some part of the community does not agree with the proposed Bitcoin Cash changes.
Having developers enforce hard fork changes without consensus sets a very dangerous precedent. A split of Bitcoin Cash will probably destroy the altcoin once and for all, which is not something the developers should be looking forward to at this stage. The biggest problem faced by this network is the and how it seemingly can be gamed by any mining entity on demand. That in itself is not a problem one can fix all that easily by any means.
Another side effect of the Emergency Difficulty Adjustment (EDA) is how it can sometimes take hours until a new network block is discovered. Solving that particular problem first and foremost will help with transaction throughput. There is no reason to mine a hundred blocks in three hours if there are less than 50 transactions per block, to give an arbitrary example.
Bitcoin Cash developers are going over some of the alternative solutions at their disposal for their mining problem. It remains to be seen if any major changes will happen in the near future. The current EDA has faced a lot of scrutiny and continues to create difficulty changes which hardly make sense. With the short-term mining profitability situation well behind us, the time has come to look at things from a long-term perspective. It is not all about maintaining the longest blockchain – as that is the one-trick pony Bitcoin Cash is right now – in the eyes of some experts. All things considered, it is good to see developers contemplating future developments.
Using hard forks to centralize control over the development of Bitcoin Cash will not play out all that well. There will be a lot of discussions taking place regarding these proposals. Hard forks have their place when it comes to software development, but they are never a go-to solution. This is especially true without consensus from the network users.