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Could This Be The End For Bitcoin Unlimited?

20 Bitcoin Exchanges have agreed to list Bitcoin Unlimited (BTU/XBU) as an altcoin, if a hard fork should occur.

In the midst of a heated discussion on the scalability and future of Bitcoin, a group of 20 Bitcoin exchanges, including major eastern and western ones, have announced that should a hard fork occur, they will list BTC (Bitcoin Core) and BTU (Bitcoin Unlimited) as two separate currencies.

This decision, backed by BitFinex, BitStamp, Kraken, BTCC, BTCChina, ShapeShift, BitSquare, QuadrigaCX, and other exchanges, was announced in a joint statement.

This announcement reads:

Since it appears likely we may see a hardfork initiated by the Bitcoin Unlimited project, we have decided to designate the Bitcoin Unlimited fork as BTU (or XBU). The Bitcoin Core implementation will continue to trade as BTC (or XBT) and all exchanges will process deposits and withdrawals in BTC even if the BTU chain has more hashing power.

These exchanges have pledged to only add Bitcoin Unlimited (BTU) as an altcoin only if both chains can be run without any conflicts, something that currently is a concern due to the risk of transaction replays.

A few hours after this announcement, Poloniex and BitMEX joined in as well, both supporting the plan released by the other exchanges. BitMEX in particular stated:

BU will not be listed or used as a deposit/withdrawal currency until replay protection is implemented and BU is not at risk of a blockchain reorganization if the Core chain becomes longer.

Transaction Replays & Hard Forks

This isn’t the first time a major cryptocurrency has come under danger of hard forking; in fact, Ethereum experienced a similar situation last year. However, this wasn’t without mishaps; Ethereum experienced a number of replay attacks after the fork.

A replay attack is where a transaction carried out on one chain is broadcasted on the other chain. For example, Bob may want to send BTU to Alice. However, this transaction could be rebroadcast on the BTC chain, meaning that Bob would lose both his BTU and BTC.

The announcement states that the exchanges will only list Bitcoin Unlimited if the replay attack vector is eliminated, such as by changing address formats or moving coins to new addresses.

“[N]one of the undersigned can list BTU unless we can run both [blockchains] independently without incident. Consequently, we insist that the Bitcoin Unlimited community (or any other consensus breaking implementation) build in strong two-way replay protection,” the group said. “Failure to do so will impede our ability to preserve BTU for customers and will either delay or outright preclude the listing of BTU.”

The End of the Road for Bitcoin Unlimited?

This new decision could be a devastating blow to Bitcoin Unlimited’s (BU) approach in what has been a tough week for BU. Earlier this week, a critical bug was discovered and later patched, but not before taking half the network’s nodes offline and leading many in the community, including Andreas Antonopoulos, to question BU’s code QA (quality assurance) process.

BU has shipped an exploitable bug on a code base that is 0.001 of the size of Core's. That's several orders of magnitude worse QA process

Additionally, according to coin.dance, a large majority of the companies and services in the Bitcoin Space prefer SegWit over Bitcoin Unlimited by a wide margin.

Furthermore, a majority of miners also support Bitcoin Core. However, if Bitcoin were to fork off into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Unlimited, the loss of a large amount of hashpower could still be detrimental to Bitcoin.

Many users and prominent community members have also voiced out against Bitcoin Unlimited, believing that it is a rash and unprofessional attempt to scale bitcoin or even an “attempted robbery.” Some have even gone as far as to suggest a User Activated Soft Fork (UASF), a type of fork where nodes actively reject blocks that don’t signal for SegWit activation.

However, this might not even be necessary, seeing that many exchanges will now only see Bitcoin Unlimited’s approach as an attempt to create an altcoin.

Do you think that Bitcoin Unlimited will try to hard fork the network? If so, do you think that their chain will survive? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Coin Dance, AdobeStock, Shutterstock

What is Bitcoin Unlimited

Given the growing popularity of the Bitcoin Unlimited project, we have decided to create a guide that seeks to provide a basic notion of what Bitcoin Unlimited is and why it was created. To learn more, be sure to visit the official website.

Remember to always examine all sides of any argument, especially the Bitcoin block size debate in which there are many opinions and arguments for and against an immidiate block size limit increase. Examine all options available like Segwit activation, Bitcoin Classic, 8MB Blocks and others.

As a company, CryptoCompare has yet to take a stance on this issue. However, as individuals, our opinions on this subject vary. One thing we can all agree on, however, is that we want to see Bitcoin turn into a widely used mainstream payment system, something that is not possible with the current rules.

What is the Block Size

As you most likely know, Bitcoin is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency. All the transactions that take place within the network are recorded on this blockchain, a public ledger that can be seen by anyone but tampered with by no one. This ledger is made up of blocks that fit together (hence the name, blockchain).

When a user makes a transaction, said transaction is included in the block that is being mined at the time, and will later be confirmed by the blocks that follow it. The more blocks there are on top of your transaction, the safer it is to assume it is immutable.

Transactions, at its most basic level, are made up of data which is usually comprised of the information regarding the transaction itself, the value, who sent it and who’ll receive it. This data, like any other, takes up space on the block it is included.

Currently, each block on the Bitcoin blockchain is able to contain 1mb of data, meaning that the block size of bitcoin is 1 megabyte. This means that there is a limit to how many transactions can fit in Bitcoin's blocks, according to the data contained in said transactions.

The blocksize limit has been put in place to prevent a series of attacks that were once possible due to an unlimited block size.

Bitcoin Block Size Issue

If you've been in crypto for a while, you've heard of the the everlasting debate that surrounds the block size issue. This debate has plagued the community for years and it has pretty much torn it apart into two groups: Those in favor of a blocksize increase and those against it. The block size issue is much more than just a curiosity or technicality and it could indeed define the future of Bitcoin as a mainstream currency.

In Bitcoin, there are multiple developer teams that work on advancing what they believe to be the best vision for Bitcoin’s future. These teams create clients (wallets) that can be used to signal a vote regarding several issues and proposals, like the segwit proposal or a block size increase hard-fork.

Currently, the most popular of these clients is, without a doubt, Bitcoin Core. However, other teams are working to push their vision of a better Bitcoin and among these is also Bitcoin Unlimited. While Bitcoin Core is the most popular client, miners have been signaling their approval for Bitcoin Unlimited and it has grown in popularity beyond that of SegWit.

The Bitcoin Unlimited client (wallet) is used to signal support for the activation of the "Emergent Consensus" protocol which is designed to allow a dynamic block size, by taking advantage of Bitcoin's existing consensus mechanism (commonly called Nakamoto Consensus). Nodes can indicate a preference on the block size issue, and direct their node to only relay blocks below their preferred size, thus hampering the distribution of larger blocks across the network. This gives a “voice” to all participants of the network and not just miner

This system allows users to choose the maximum block size they want to accept as valid. However, there is a user-configurable failsafe mechanism that allows users to accept a block larger than the limit they have previously set if the number of blocks above this limit reaches a certain number. This system ensures that no users are accidentally left behind.

In the BU system, node operators can choose the blocksize limit they vote on by modifying their client via a GUI menu and miners choose to increase or decrease the blocksize according to what nodes are voting on. This would, in theory, create a system where Bitcoin scales according to the space needed to accommodate the transactions in the network which is prone to keep growing like Bitcoin’s popularity and user base. As Satoshi Nakamoto once said:

“In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes. I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.”

It works as this:

Nodes can signal the block size that they are willing to accept, be it higher or lower than the current one at the time. This setting is called Excessive Block Size (EB) and can be configured by nodes via their BU client. Miners will then, according to the nodes’ signals, increase (or decrease) the block size limit to satisfy the nodes’ requests. This setting is called Maximum Generation Size (MG) and can be configured by miners.

In order to avoid the EB setting being too low for some nodes, causing a chain split (fork), BU has a built-in user-configurable failsafe mechanism, which we previously mentioned. This allows users to accept blocks that are above this limit if they reach a certain number. This setting is called Excessive Acceptance Depth (AD).

Bitcoin Unlimited will be activated when the majority of the miners signal their approval. The fact that a simple the majority of miners can dictate the longest chain (and that the longest chain "wins") is the fundamental truth of Bitcoin's "Nakamoto Consensus" mechanism. Bitcoin Unlimited recognizes this. Although you may have heard that Segregated Witness (SW) activates at a 95% vote, this activation level is simply a convention. The truth is that if 51% of the miners wanted a change, they could simply mine only the changed blocks, and reject all unchanged blocks. Since 51% is the majority of the miners, the changed chain would be the longest, and therefore the "winner".

Even more problematic, a majority vote does not guarantee activation. Miners could be lying in their vote, and refuse to activate the change when the time comes, or revert it after a few blocks. This strategy, incidentally is devastating for Segregated Witness since it would allow the miners to steal all the coins that have been spent as SW transactions. So these higher layer activation protocols fundamentally rely on the honesty of majority of the participants. This makes sense. Voting on an activation point is a faulty solution to the same "distributed consensus" problem that plagued researchers for years until Bitcoin's elegant solution was created.

This consensus issue is why Bitcoin Unlimited's activation mechanism ensures that no Bitcoin Unlimited users are accidentally left behind when activation occurs. However, it is clearly advantageous for activation to happen when a large majority of miners and ecosystem participants agree to it. Since Bitcoin Unlimited recognizes that all the "higher layer" activation schemes rely on trust, they simply choose to trust. They trust that miners and other ecosystem participants are intensely interested in Bitcoin's success, and so it is expected that they will communicate together to schedule activation when appropriate. Simulations show that an approval rate of 75% would result in a very smooth transition, but activation at 2/3rds approval is also possible.

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What Is Bitcoin Unlimited?

There is always so much happening around digital currencies, especially bitcoin. A new term, ‘Bitcoin Unlimited’, has been floating around for some time now. So what exactly is Bitcoin Unlimited? Will it result in a hard fork (forced splitting off of the currency)? (Related: Does Ethereum's Hard Fork Undermind Smart Contracts?)

The issue revolves around the size of the blocks which are added to its blockchain. Blocks are files where data pertaining to the bitcoin network is permanently recorded. A block records some or all of the most recent bitcoin transactions that have not yet entered any prior blocks. Thus a block is like a page of a ledger or record book. Each time a block is ‘completed’, it gives way to the next block in the blockchain. A block is thus a permanent store of records which, once written, cannot be altered or removed. (Related: Bitcoin is Money, Rules Federal Judge in Landmark Case.)

Bitcoin blocks have a limited ‘storage’ capacity of 1MB since the beginning and under the current popular system of Bitcoin Core. However, Bitcoin Unlimited argues that the size of these blocks should be increased as it would enable smoother running by decongesting the blocks. Unlike the present rigid size of 1MB, Bitcoin Unlimited advocates complete freedom and flexibility to increase the size of blockchain and this will be done by miners. So, if there is a consensus on this, we will have a new bitcoin blockchain with large-sized blocks. Opponents feel that increasing the size of blocks can result in a hard fork in the code which would split the network. They also believe that such flexibility can result in miners opting for bigger and bigger blocks – making it harder for miners with limited resources to mine, thereby concentrating the ‘mining power’ in the hands of few miners. Such concentration will essentially result in centralization which is opposite to the idea of decentralization which is core to bitcoin.

While proponents of Bitcoin Unlimited claim that they will not fork the blockchain, they do say that “If some other entity causes a fork, if for example miners start producing > 1MB blocks, then Bitcoin Unlimited nodes will follow the most-work (generally the longest) fork. This means that your BU node will track the mining majority rather than a specific choice.” In the current situation, if Bitcoin Unlimited wants to have its way, they need majority nodes on their side or else, any attempt to change the size of the block will be rejected by ‘majority’ nodes.

Commenting on the situation, Mahin Gupta, co-founder and CTO, Zebpay told Investopedia that, “For a hard fork to happen in bitcoin, Bitcoin Unlimited miners needs to increase the block size on their own. At the moment majority of network will reject such blocks, so until the Bitcoin Unlimited miners are in majority it does not make sense, and they will not do a hard fork till they don’t get consensus as it is detrimental to the entire ecosystem. Right now, at around 10% they are far from a consensus. So there is a very remote possibility of a hard fork.”

Bitcoin Unlimited

DEFINITION of 'Bitcoin Unlimited'

A proposed upgrade to Bitcoin Core that allows larger block sizes. Bitcoin Unlimited is designed to improve transaction speed through scale.

Bitcoin Classic

Bitcoin XT

Block (Bitcoin Block)

Block Reward

BREAKING DOWN 'Bitcoin Unlimited'

The development of bitcoin was jumpstarted by Satoshi Nakamoto, who published a paper in 2008 called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. The paper described the use of a peer-to-peer network as a solution to the problem of double-spending. The problem – that a digital currency or token can used in more than one transaction – is not found in physical currencies, as a physical bill or coin can, by its nature, only exist in one place at a single time. Since a digital currency does not exist in the physical space, using it in a transaction does not remove it from someone’s possession.

The software standard for Bitcoin developed by Nakamoto is referred to as Bitcoin or Bitcoin Core. Since its launch, a number of improvements to the software have been proposed. These proposals often focus on increasing the number of transactions that the system can handle, either by speeding up the process or by increasing the size of bitcoin blocks.

Blocks are files where bitcoin network data is permanently recorded. A block records recent bitcoin transactions, and serves a similar purpose as a ledger page or record book. Each time a block is completed it gives way to the next block in the blockchain. Blocks in Bitcoin Core are limited to one megabyte. Bitcoin Unlimited proposed that the size of blocks should be increased, and that miners – individuals and companies that provide the computing power required to maintain records of bitcoin transactions – will step up to increase capacity.

Because bitcoin is not controlled by a single entity, decisions concerning upgrades are done made through consensus. One of the primary reasons for this approach is that any organization that pushes forward with a change that other groups have not agreed to can result in bitcoin “forking”, which means that the network that runs bitcoin splits between different standards. A consensus-driven approach can, however, make it harder to tackle issues that bitcoin adoption faces.

Concern over forking is one of the reasons why Bitcoin Unlimited is not the new standard. Another concern voiced over Bitcoin Unlimited is that allowing bigger blocks could result in only miners with large processing power being profitable, while smaller miners with more limited resources will be pushed out. The concentration of capacity generation in the hands of fewer miners could increase costs. Proponents of Bitcoin Unlimited believe that moving away from the block size limit will democratize the system, as miners and node owners are free to choose how large of a block size to accept.

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I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be… more

chithidio@Yahoo.com

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Question on a link

In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?

Repair the Yahoo Search App.

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I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.

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WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
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net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
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This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.

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I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and… more

Bitcoin Core vs Bitcoin Unlimited

One of the hottest topics of debate right now is whether or not users should support Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin Unlimited. While the second has most of mining support, Core is the preferred solution for every major service provider and exchange. It is a difficult choice to make, albeit both solutions claim to work towards the same end goal. Let’s see what they both have to offer and how they are different.

2. Bitcoin Unlimited

When this project was first announced, it gained significant backing from some of the more prominent members in the bitcoin industry. Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, and a few others felt Bitcoin Core was not taking the necessary steps to make bitcoin scale. Bitcoin Unlimited proposes a modest block size increase, although the specific details will be determined by network users themselves by reaching a consensus.

Bitcoin Unlimited builds upon what Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic have unsuccessfully tried to achieve in the past. Giving miners the option to configure the size of blocks they will validate, Bitcoin Unlimited is doing things very differently from Bitcoin Core. The default size is still one megabyte, yet the maximum generation size is a fully customizable option. Network nodes have a similar option to determine which blocks they will validate and how large they can be.

As one would expect, Bitcoin Unlimited has gained the support from some of the larger mining pools. However, the mining community is only a part of the overall network. Service providers, exchanges, and wallet operators are not too keen on what Bitcoin Unlimited proposes. Without that critical support, the chances of BU succeeding are limited.

1. Bitcoin Core

Over the course of the past nine years, Bitcoin Core has always been the main branch of development. Even though the influence of Blockstream has grown a lot, the company is also responsible for funding a large portion of all bitcoin development progress. Despite providing this incentive, the influence of Blockstream has remained somewhat limited, even though some people strongly feel otherwise.

It has taken the Bitcoin Core some time to figure out a scaling solution, which is presented in the form of SegWit. Bitcoin Unlimited supporters feel SegWit will not provide the necessary scaling capacities, which is why they developed their own solution. Segregated Witness will also lay the foundation for the Lightning Network, although that concept still requires a lot of work. The goal is to hard-code a block size limit into the bitcoin network, rather than giving node owners and miners a free choice regarding this matter.

It is the post-Segregated Witness roadmap that has some people concerned. To be more precise, BU supporters feel the block size will remain hardcoded at its 1MB size, condemning the bitcoin blockchain to become a settlement network rivaling SWIFT. Although this is not necessarily how things will play out it is one of the problems Bitcoin Core developers need to address. Despite the lack of an official “roadmap”, virtually every popular service provider feels SegWit is the right way to go, rather than using Bitcoin Unlimited’s proposal.

Which one do users prefer?

We ran a twitter poll asking our followers which side they are on, core or unlimited. After over 400 votes, our followers unanimously sided with Core.

Which side are you on?

— The Merkle (@themerklenews) March 26, 2017

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

About The Author

JP Buntinx is a FinTech and Bitcoin enthusiast living in Belgium. His passion for finance and technology made him one of the world's leading freelance Bitcoin writers, and he aims to achieve the same level of respect in the FinTech sector.

The debate is taking forever, but now is the time to proof to the world we can implement Segwit! We need to make it happen 😉

What’s taking so long to implement Segwit? The transaction fees are on the verge of getting out of hand. They killed the Bitcoin micropayments market. Now they might allow competitors to kill the rest of the Bitcoin market.

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Why Bitcoin Unlimited’s “Emergent Consensus” Is a Gamble

Bitcoin Unlimited, one of the Bitcoin Core software forks introduced in late 2015, garnered much attention in recent months. The project gained hash power support from several new Bitcoin mining pools, including ViaBTC, GBMiners and BTC.TOP, while node adoption appears to be on the rise as well.

The central idea behind Bitcoin Unlimited — specified in “Bitcoin Unlimited Improvement Proposal 001” (BUIP001) — is to hand control of Bitcoin’s block size limit to users and miners. Or perhaps more accurately: to make this control more explicit and easier to handle.

But as explained in “How Bitcoin Unlimited Users May End Up on Different Blockchains,” BUIP001 does not include a technical consensus mechanism as reliable as in Bitcoin’s current consensus rules.

Instead, Bitcoin Unlimited relies on a philosophy often referred to as “Emergent Consensus.”

(Note: If you are not sure how Bitcoin Unlimited works, or what the technical weaknesses of BUIP001 are, make sure to first read “A Closer Look at Bitcoin Unlimited’s Configurable Block Size Proposal” and “How Bitcoin Unlimited Users May End Up on Different Blockchains.”)

BUIP001 does not ensure machine consensus; users can configure their nodes to split into different blockchains, either intentionally or unintentionally. Instead, Bitcoin Unlimited relies on “Emergent Consensus.” This is a conviction that participants in the Bitcoin ecosystem have a strong enough economic incentive to converge on a single blockchain, such that they will converge on a single blockchain. If their software does not automatically realize this, users are expected to configure their settings to make it happen. After all, it benefits everyone to be on the same blockchain and to be able to transact with one another.

How this Emergent Consensus should form is not really documented, however. While some have made analogies — with flocks of birds, for example — it’s not clear how these apply to Bitcoin, exactly.

That said, it is possible to draw out a scenario that many Bitcoin Unlimited proponents roughly envisage. As a first step, users should signal what size of blocks they will accept with the Excessive Block Size (EB) setting. Then, miners — incentivized to satisfy market demand — should increase (or decrease) the block size limit accordingly. Finally, if these new blocks exceed some users’ EB, these users are expected to follow regardless, either because their Excessive Acceptance Depth (AD) setting is triggered, or maybe because they’ll reconfigure their nodes manually.

As explained in “How Bitcoin Unlimited Users May End Up on Different Blockchains,” this scenario does present some problems. For one, if a user’s EB signaling is trivially spoofed by an adversary, miners can be tricked into thinking a block size limit increase has more support than it does — or perhaps malicious miners can themselves trick users.

And for the (remaining) users, this scenario presents an odd choice: Either they set their AD settings low to remain in consensus, but essentially give up much of their autonomy to miners; or they set their AD settings high to protect their autonomy, but risk splitting the network.

To counter some of the problems described, Emergent Consensus can also be established through debate on forums, blog posts, chat rooms and other media. Realistically, it may even require this kind of off-chain coordination, to some extent.

For example, while mining pool ViaBTC wants to hard fork to a two-megabyte block size limit, that is not what the pool is currently signaling with its EB settings. If it did, that could be abused to split the network. Instead, ViaBTC signals support for one megabyte and in their “miner guide” proposes to hard fork to two megabytes once at least 75 percent of hash power acknowledges support.

However, this kind of off-chain coordination is not unique. Groups of people have coordinated and achieved consensus through discourse for a long time. But such systems often either have a leader or tend to break down and split into factions once the number of participants reaches a certain size. Other popular open-source projects, for example, sometimes consist of hundreds of incompatible forks.

And this is probably even more true under adversarial conditions. If the people in these groups don’t really know or trust one another, they have no way of knowing whether the other people are telling the truth or lying. Even a single adversary can pretend to be many users and communicate many false preferences. This makes coordination and reaching consensus a very difficult problem to solve.

In fact, this is the Byzantine Generals’ Problem. That is exactly the problem Satoshi Nakamoto attempted to address.

With a track record of about eight years, Bitcoin’s main technological achievement is a math-based protocol that realizes strong, fast, scalable and automated machine consensus for large groups of people who do not necessarily know or trust one another. Bitcoin is reasonably “Byzantine Fault tolerant.”

Bitcoin Unlimited proponents believe that Bitcoin’s economic incentives — the incentive for users to all remain part of the same Bitcoin blockchain — is in itself sufficiently Byzantine Fault tolerant. But that is, so far, largely unproven. No altcoin relies on similar assumptions, nor is there a publicly available testnet where the BUIP001 configurations are actively used.

What Bitcoin Unlimited Changes

That said, part of the same Bitcoin Unlimited philosophy is that Bitcoin relies on a sort of Emergent Consensus anyway.

Rather than merely relying on math, code or protocol, many really see Bitcoin as a consensus between people first and foremost. People choose to partake in the system, people give it value, and sometimes — like during the August 2010 and March 2013 blockchain forks — people have to coordinate “off-chain” to determine which chain is valid.

As such, BUIP001 doesn’t fundamentally change anything. Users choose to run Bitcoin Unlimited. Node software can already be (re-)compiled. And a social consensus may have to form “off-chain” either way.

But by making this control more explicit and easier to handle, and assuming users actually use these options, Bitcoin Unlimited does rely on the human consensus aspect to a much larger extent. Rather than opting into a protocol once and relying on machine consensus from then on, users need to take on a much more proactive role. As one Bitcoin Unlimited proponent noted, shortly after miners had to reconfigure their nodes in response to a bug that briefly forked the network earlier this week: “This IS part of how Bitcoin works. It’s not meant for people sleeping at the wheel.”

It is true that BUIP001 doesn’t introduce anything that wasn’t possible before. As an open-source project, users and miners could always recompile their Bitcoin software to do anything that Bitcoin Unlimited allows. But of course, that in itself is not an argument in favor of BUIP001. Just because users could, that does not mean they should.

So far, Bitcoin has had several forks that lasted for several blocks, caused by technical failures. The August 2010 blockchain fork was needed to revert the creation of billions of bitcoins out of thin air, which required orphaning an hour-long chain. The only reason that the event wasn’t catastrophic is that bitcoin was hardly used as money back then. During the March 2013 blockchain fork, however, the network was unreliable for real users, and at least one person was double-spent, while several miners wasted valuable resources mining an orphaned chain. The same is true for the July 2015 blockchain fork, where miners were urged to switch to fully validating mining pools, and many have learned from that mistake.

Indeed, developers, miners and the rest of the Bitcoin community have generally tried to avoid these types of crisis events as much as they possibly can.

In contrast, Bitcoin Unlimited seems to embrace them as an upgrade mechanism.

“Jonny1000” contributed to this article.

Author's note: An earlier version of this article suggested there is no testnet for BUIP001 at all. Since publication, it was pointed out there actually is such a testnet, dubbed "nolnet". This testnet is not really publicly available, however, and seems to be used only by a small group of developers close to the Bitcoin Unlimited project. And of course, by definition a testnet does not test economic incentives either way, so these remain unproven.

Major Exchanges Will Consider Bitcoin Unlimited a “New Asset”

If a Bitcoin Unlimited hard fork leads to a coin-split, major bitcoin exchanges will list coins on that branch as a new asset: BTU.

Earlier this week, the world’s largest mining pool, AntPool, announced it would switch all its hash power to Bitcoin Unlimited, a software implementation that is incompatible with the current Bitcoin protocol. With this move from an influential player in the Chinese mining ecosystem, a split in Bitcoin’s blockchain is starting to look more likely. If such a coin-split occurs, there could — for a while — be two types of “bitcoin,” which many worry could be confusing.

A group of major exchanges, including Bitfinex, Kraken, Bitstamp, BTCC and others, therefore announced today that coins on the Bitcoin Unlimited branch will be considered a new asset. Coins on the branch that follows the current Bitcoin protocol will be listed under the original ticker.

“[I]f a contentious hardfork occurs, the Bitcoin Core implementation will continue to be listed as BTC (or XBT) and the new fork as BTU (or XBU),” says the joint letter published today.

A hard fork is an incompatible protocol change. These can be risky, because if some Bitcoin users adopt the change, while others do not, the network, blockchain, and currency can split in two.

This is what happened to Ethereum last summer, which is why there is now also an “Ethereum Classic.” There was relatively little contention over which of the two branches should be called “Ethereum” at the time of the fork, in part because the Ethereum Foundation holds the “Ethereum” trademark, and its founder, Vitalik Buterin, made a clear choice for the hard-forked chain.

But for Bitcoin, no one holds a trademark, and it seems unlikely Satoshi Nakamoto will ever return. (And even if he does return it’s unclear how much authority Bitcoin users would attribute to him.) As such, a coin-split, which may occur if Bitcoin Unlimited hard forks and becomes incompatible with most other Bitcoin implementations, could be more confusing.

To avoid as much confusion as possible, and ensure that operations can continue, a group of some of the biggest bitcoin exchanges in the world is now committing to list the coins on the Bitcoin Unlimited branch as a new asset, should the situation arise.

“Since it appears likely we may see a hardfork initiated by the Bitcoin Unlimited project, we have decided to designate the Bitcoin Unlimited fork as BTU (or XBU),” they state. “The Bitcoin Core implementation will continue to trade as BTC (or XBT) and all exchanges will process deposits and withdrawals in BTC even if the BTU chain has more hashing power.”

Among others, the letter is signed by the biggest exchange in the world by trading volume, Bitfinex, the biggest euro exchange by trading volume, Kraken, and major Chinese exchange BTCC. Other signatories include major USD exchange Bitstamp, Mexico-based exchange Bitso, UK-based exchange Coinfloor, Dutch brokerage and exchange Bitonic/Bl3p, altcoin exchanges Bittrex and ShapeShift, decentralized exchange Bitsquare/bisq and several more.

Additionally, the exchanges request that the Bitcoin Unlimited team solves another problem before BTU is listed on the exchanges at all: replay attacks.

Without special precautions, a coin-split can be messy. When Ethereum split, for example, transactions on both sides of the fork looked exactly the same. As such, spending coins on one end of the chain could accidentally lead to the equivalent coin being spent on the other side of the chain. Instead of paying someone only ether (ETH), a user may unintentionally pay classic ether (ETC) as well — or vice versa.

The current implementation of Bitcoin Unlimited does not include replay protection. Therefore, if Bitcoin Unlimited hard forks and creates a coin-split, similar problems may emerge.

As such, the exchanges also ask the Bitcoin Unlimited team to include replay protection.

“None of the undersigned can list BTU unless we can run both chains independently without incident. Consequently, we insist that the Bitcoin Unlimited community (or any other consensus breaking implementation) build in strong two-way replay protection. Failure to do so will impede our ability to preserve BTU for customers and will either delay or outright preclude the listing of BTU,” they write.

Read the complete letter with signatories here.