The flaw between bitcoin and its cash-back bitcoin is not just ideological – it's dangerous.
For months, a technical whim has led some users of both cryptocurrencies to lose money temporarily and permanently. But it seems that the nightmare scenario could soon happen in the past, as the bitcoin cash developer team recently announced that it was taking steps to fix the problem.
To recap, Bitcoin was first split into bitcoin early in the summer to try to experiment with a different long-term technical vision of the technology. However, despite their differences, it is their similarities that cause the problem.
When Bitcoin Cash created a new blockchain from Bitcoin's transaction history, it took a lot of the old code, including the address format used by users to send l & # 39; money. The problem with this is, if users are not careful, they can send bitcoin money to their bitcoin addresses, or vice versa.
A quick search on google uncovers dozens of posts on the forum where users complain about this problem.
"I accidentally sent my BTC to an address of the BCC, is there a way to get it back, is there anyone who can help me?" in that case?" has pleaded a user on Bitcoin Stack Exchange, a technical forum.
"It was about 500 bucks, I feel like an idiot!" another said asking for help.
The solution, however, is at your fingertips: address formats simply need to be changed so that they are not compatible. And Amaury Séchet, lead developer of Bitcoin ABC (implementation of a Bitcoin Cash software), believes that the completion of this project should be the next big step of the project.
In announcing his work on a new address format called cashaddr, he called it an "urgent" change, arguing that the change could be made as early as December.
He added later:
"In order to reduce confusion for users with the use of different addresses, I think it's important to deploy this quickly and stop the fragmentation of l & # 39; ecosystem ".
Change
Unlike the last big money change of Bitcoin, this one would not need to be a hard fork, which means that not everyone needs it to update its software to stay on the network.
"The" key "of this word game is that public and private cryptographic key pairs will not change – the way they are represented as" addresses "will be different in portfolio software, "Calin Culianu, contributed to Bitcoin ABC software, told CoinDesk.
Nevertheless, he noted that the upgrade will go more easily if everyone, including portfolio providers, adopts the change in advance. In this way, the entire ecosystem will be aware of new addresses.
But what's interesting is that Séchet's proposal inspires changes made by contributors to Bitcoin Core, the volunteer development group behind the main implementation of bitcoin.
Although Bitcoin Cash intends to compete with bitcoin, trying to lower costs, this willingness to inspire Bitcoin's main software implementation shows that both crypto- currencies are not totally different.
"We want the user experience to be flawless, especially with potentially large amounts of money," said Shammah Chancellor, a Bitcoin ABC collaborator.
Obtaining a Consensus
All that being said, the jury still does not know if the proposal will be adopted.
The developers claim that he needs an agreement from the bitcoin cash community. A developer, Roy Bagami, for example, agrees with the launch of a new address format, but says that he "is not a big fan of bech32 ", the Sechet cashaddr format based on. So, he proposed something else.
Another Freetrader developer has published a "community survey" to get a clearer idea of the feeling.
Yet others have championed the change. "It's a good proposal," said the Chancellor at CoinDesk.
More generally, developers have an optimistic view of the bitcoin branch, Culianu claiming that it's "awesome", and he no longer feels the need to help.
"I was more interested in making sure he's taking off and he's got a shot when he really needed manpower – now that Amaury Séchet has put together an even bigger team and all goes well – I no longer felt the need to contribute, "Culianu told CoinDesk.
Other contributors have proposed longer-term roadmaps with possible improvements. Bitcoin Cash could bring down the line, for example by addressing the "malleability of transactions" bug. While they might be an indication of what will happen, they have mostly generated a heated debate up until now.
In one case as in the other, an address format may appear to be a minor change, but this could be a sign of further differentiation between bitcoin and bitcoin.
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