With the launch of Bitcoin Cash, there are some important facts that supporters would do well to remember. Those wishing to support this solution will have their work cut out for them, as ensuring its success will require a lot of effort. There are already a lot of questions regarding mining, clients, nodes, and other aspects of the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. Below are some of the points that Bitcoin ABC users should keep in mind in order to properly ensure the viability of BCH.
4. Set Up a Bitcoin Cash Full Node
The people over at Satoshi Labs — best known for the Trezor hardware wallet — have launched a GitHub project allowing anyone in the world to run a full Bitcoin ABC node. Having more of these nodes on the network will help to secure the ecosystem and broadcast transactions as well. Setting up the Satoshi Labs software requires users to run the Linux operating system, as it does not appear to be available for Windows users yet. Make sure to check out the GitHub repo if you are interested in setting up a full node for Bitcoin Cash.
3. Mine Bitcoin Cash
Solo mining Bitcoin Cash will be quite difficult at first, as there does not yet appear to be a solo pool available. It is certainly possible that this will change in the near future, but for now your best bet would be to use any of the multiple mining pools. These are still the early days of Bitcoin Cash mining and it appears no one had even considered setting up a solo mining pool as Bitcoin has. It will be interesting to see if somebody does so in the future.
It does appear that Multipool.us will allow its users to mine Bitcoin Cash, which is significant. It already had a pool for Bitcoin Classic, but it seems the same server will be used for mining Bitcoin Cash in the future. It would be best to wait until the pool has officially acknowledged its support for BCH, since the mining pool information may not be the same as that of Bitcoin Classic. Having a multipool on board for this particular attacking would be rather significant news.
2. Install a BCH Price Ticker
A lot of people will want to keep a close eye on the Bitcoin Cash price over the next few days and weeks. One user has created a Chrome extension specifically for this purpose. Always be wary when downloading and installing Chrome extensions from unknown sources. It does appear this price ticker was developed with the utmost respect for all users, but some caution is always advised. Advanced traders will rely on charts and technical analysis for this particular purpose, but having a Chrome plugin might just do the trick as well.
1. Update Your Bitcoin ABC Client
The one thing all Bitcoin Cash supporters should do now if they have not already is make sure they have the latest Bitcoin ABC client. A new client was released less than a week ago and included some significant fixes. Perhaps the biggest change is how the new client enforces strong replay protection, as that was one feature most people felt lacking up until then. It is good to see the developers issuing a new version almost a week prior to the fork activating on the network.
So far, it seems this new client has no known issues whatsoever. That is good news, as many people feel the Bitcoin ABC wallet may be a security risk more than anything else. Now that this client has alleviated most of those concerns, there is seemingly nothing to worry about for the time being. It will be interesting to see how the client behaves once the fork activates. Interesting times are ahead for Bitcoin Cash and its supporters.
