An anomaly was observed over the weekend that led the Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain to split into 3, as reported by BitMEX. The blockchain basically extended by 52 blocks with respect to the fork of July 24th.
According to 420 Bitcoin SV peers, the nodes are currently on different chains and at different heights:
* 65% at the current tip
* 17% stuck on a large 210MB block
* 19% on the old pre-hardfork chain pic.twitter.com/hO98lFX9Zw— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) August 3, 2019
According to the BitMEX graph, 65% of the Bitcoin SV blockchain is at the correct height, 17% is at the 210MB block and the rest is still on the chain before the fork occurred on July 24th, when the block size was changed from 128MB to 2GB.
Moreover, to operate as a Bitcoin SV node or to participate in mining operations a user needs to have a 1Gbit connection both in upload and download. Ryan Charles of Money Button explained how expensive it is to run a Bitcoin SV node:
“Money Button went down because our Bitcoin SV node ran out of memory and crashed during a stress test. Running a node is expensive. Our new instance will cost thousands of dollars per month to operate. As blocks continue to get larger and we have to upgrade the instance many times, this cost will balloon. Since we do not earn money from transaction fees like miners, it will be too expensive for us to run a node.”
There’s also to consider the aspect of the transactions that concern the other blockchain: who hasn’t passed to the new chain will have to manage also the other two, although it’s also true that Coingeek, that holds more than 32% of the hashrate, will force all the miners to follow the new chain.
Finally, regarding the size of the Bitcoin SV blockchain, this will increase more and more in size. Bitcoin, for example, with 1MB blocks will weigh 10TB in 2030, while bitcoin SV already has 2GB blocks.
