A lot has been said about the Bitcoin Cash mining difficulty algorithm. This EDA has caused so much controversy in its brief lifespan, it isn’t entirely surprising that the BCH developers decided to get rid of it once and for all. It now appears one of the people responsible for creating the EDA has acknowledged this technology was designed to harm Bitcoin first and foremost. That’s a rather irresponsible approach, to say the very least.
BCH EDA was an Attack Against Bitcoin
Over the past few months, people have discovered multiple shortcomings of the Bitcoin Cash EDA. Not only is this difficulty adjustment algorithm part of the reason why the BCH supply is so inflated, miners have taken advantage of this technology as a way to manipulate the network difficulty on multiple occasions. It is evident the design of this EDA was questionable at best, and things have only gotten worse over time. Thankfully, the upcoming hard fork will remove this EDA once and for all.
In a surprising turn of events, one of the people who worked on this EDA now admits it was implemented due to the lack of any other viable option at the time and designed with malicious intent. Despite some struggles, the EDA has largely accomplished its goals, which include preventing the blockchain from dying and encouraging miners to participate in the so-called flippening. So far there is no flippening to speak of, and Bitcoin Cash is facing an even steeper uphill battle now than before.
However, the latter objective has many Bitcoin supporters up in arms right now. The Bitcoin Cash EDA was, according to its chief scientist, developed to take hash power away from Core in “bursts”. We have seen the hashpower of BTC and BCH fluctuate wildly depending on which coin was more profitable at any given moment. Given the manipulation of this difficulty over the past few months, this part succeeded. As miners were lured away, network congestion on the Bitcoin network became a very real problem once again. This was all orchestrated to demonstrate that small blocks are a problem and big blocks are the future of Bitcoin.
So far, however, the EDA has not entirely succeeded in its mission. Multiple attacks on Bitcoin intended to cause congestion haven’t had any lingering effects. Even the latest attack – which took place this weekend – has been somewhat thwarted already. This scheme devised by Bitcoin Cash’s developers and backers is falling apart as we speak, even though speculators will keep pushing its price up for quite some time to come. It is evident this dubious project should never have existed in the first place. It was an irresponsible attempt to discredit Bitcoin, but it ultimately backfired.
Political shenanigans in the Bitcoin world have brought out the worst in people over these past few months. The initial “takeover” attempts in the form of Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic failed before they could cause any lasting damage. By introducing Bitcoin Cash as a hard fork and airdrop, the team played their trump card pretty quickly. This focus on politics rather than on making Bitcoin a better currency overall has proven quite problematic. Right now, the community is far more fractured than it ever was before.
The bigger question is how this news will be received by the Bitcoin Cash community. A lot of people will dismiss the chief scientist’s admission as a fraud, even though it is evident there is a lot of truth to this confession. Moreover, it shows the incompetence of the Bitcoin Cash developers who decided to implement an ill-advised, risky EDA as a way to successfully launch their altcoin in time. Combined with last week’s price pump, it is evident things aren’t going according to plan. There are possibly even more skeletons in the closet which we have yet to discover.
