Slush Pool Will Not Support Bitcoin Cash in August 1 Hard Fork

 

Slush Pool along with other mining pools such as Bixin, will not support Bitcoin Cash and its Aug. 1 hard fork execution. Initially created by Bitmain, Bitcoin Cash, formerly known as Bitcoin ABC, is a hard fork that is being developed and launched by a few mining pools led by ViaBTC.  It aims to mine 8 MB blocks, which are eight times larger than that of  Bitcoin, and will maintain a network without the implementation of the  Bitcoin Core development team’s transaction malleability fix and scaling  solution Segregated Witness (SegWit). Cointelegraph reported in an article entitled “Bitmain: Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork Merely Contingency Plan for UASF”  that not even Bitmain, the original creator of Bitcoin Cash, is sure  whether the company will support the ViaBTC-led Bitcoin Cash hard fork  or not. 

“Merely a contingency plan”

In an official blog post, Bitmain revealed that the company  created Bitcoin ABC as merely a contingency plan towards Bitcoin  Improvement Proposal BIP 148, meaning that the company was only going to  activate or pursue the activation of Bitcoin ABC if BIP 148 had been  activated. But, Bitmain terminated its plan to activate Bitcoin ABC after BIP  148 had been avoided and the mining community, businesses, users,  investors and traders came to a consensus to activate SegWit via BIP  141, the original SegWit proposal. Analysts explained BIP 91 and BIP 141  as the last opportunity for the mining community to avoid a chain split  and the mining community agreed to activate it. With the except for ViaBTC, which had different plans from the beginning. To understand as to why leading mining pools including Slush Pool and  Bixin will not be supporting the Aug. 1 hard fork of ViaBTC and Bitcoin  Cash, it is important to note that there were two driving factors of  BIP 141 SegWit activation. These are BIP 141 user-activated soft fork  (UASF) and SegWit2x, a proposal introduced by the Digital Currency  Group-led consortium of 86 companies. Bitmain, ViaBTC and the majority of the mining community agreed to  SegWit2x and to activate SegWit and to increase the Bitcoin block size  to 2 MB thereafter. However, despite agreeing to activate SegWit2x and  SegWit with the industry and mining community, it pursued the execution  of a hard fork in Bitcoin Cash, which the Bitcoin industry and some  miners have already rejected. 

Alternative, not Bitcoin

Cointelegraph further emphasized in its latest report that the Aug. 1 hard fork will have a minimal impact on the Bitcoin network,  primarily because the vast majority of the industry perceives Bitcoin  Cash as an alternative cryptocurrency and not as Bitcoin. In fact, on July 28, Coinbase, the largest wallet operator and a  major Bitcoin exchange operator, announced that it does not intend to  interact with the Bitcoin Cash Blockchain. In addition, Slush Pool announced: 

“We want to let you know, that we currently have no plans to support  the emerging Bitcoin hard fork called Bitcoin Cash (BCC) scheduled for  the Aug. 1st, 12:20 UTC. As for now, we do not see a real demand from  miners and the costs of creating and maintaining separate Bitcoin Cash  infrastructure would be too high.”