On November 13, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the successful completion of the Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm hard fork applied to the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network. It’s been well over 24-hours since the fork, and now the protocol’s current DAA has seemed to find its 144 block average in order to maintain consistent block time intervals.
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After the Successful DAA Hard Fork, Network Participants Wait for the Protocol to Find a Consistent Block Time Average
It’s been over 24-hours since the bitcoin cash network forked at block height 504031. The hard fork was smooth without any complications, and the new DAA started its first few hours with relatively consistent 10-15 minute block time intervals. There’s been a variance since then, as the new DAA still had to find its 144 block average in order to obtain some better consistency.
During the first few hours before the block time variances, BCH mining profitability was equal to BTC mining profits but dropped shortly after. Now the BCH chain is 21 percent more profitable to mine, as the BCH network is operating at 11.7 percent of the legacy chain’s difficulty. Blocks are now coming in steady as the past ten blocks found have had interval times between 5-13 minutes.
BCH Markets Rebound After Fork Locks In
The price of bitcoin cash is helping keep the BTC profitability difference lower at the moment, but BCH markets are down 5 percent. One BCH is valued at $1,270 per token with a decent $1.2B worth of 24-hour global trade volume. The top five exchanges trading the largest BCH volumes include Bithumb, Bitfinex, Coinone, Poloniex, and Korbit. Three out of five of those trading platforms are headquartered in South Korea as the won still dominates BCH trade volume by currency.
The cryptocurrency has received some more infrastructure support this week as well. For instance, people can now purchase BCH on the platform Bittylicious. The well-known appbox and virtual server business Bytesized Hosting is now accepting bitcoin cash for services. Furthermore, the online webshop Fudmart has temporarily suspended BTC payments for goods and implemented bitcoin cash, as well as dash and litecoin, “due to high transaction fees and delays.” Additionally, the Pirate Bay and Flattr founder’s private domain registrar, Njalla, is now accepting bitcoin cash payments for domains as well.
Ethereum Creator: ‘I Consider BCH a Legitimate Contender for the Bitcoin Name’
In other bitcoin cash news, ever since BCH temporarily knocked ETH out of the second place position, the inventor of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has been favoring the forked currency over social media.
This week Buterin congratulated bitcoin cash supporters and offered his opinions about the current drama taking place within the cryptocurrency community. Buterin explains he never thought that BTC network fees would ever exceed $0.20 per transaction and the Ethereum founder believes BCH is a contender for the ‘Bitcoin’ name.
“I consider BCH a legitimate contender for the bitcoin name,” explains Buterin over Twitter. “I consider bitcoin’s *failure* to raise block sizes to keep fees reasonable to be a large (non-consensual) change to the ‘original plan,’ which is morally tantamount to a hard fork.”
That said, *right now,* I think trying to claim “BCH = Bitcoin” is a bad idea as it *is* a minority opinion in the ‘greater bitcoin community.’
So far BCH supporters are confident with the DAA adjustment as the block intervals are moving along more consistently now. Block times started stabilizing around block height 504256 and have remained uniform so far. The community is pleased that the market value of BCH is still holding strong, after reaching a high of $2,400 per BCH and dipping by $1,000 an hour later. Since then the value per BCH has held a $1,200-1,300 price range and has remained fairly stable since the new DAA was implemented.
What do you think about the bitcoin cash fork and the new DAA? What do you think about Vitalik’s statements? Do you agree with the Ethereum creator? Let us know in the comments below.
Images via Pixabay, Bitcoincash.org, and Twitter.
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