Bitcoin Cash: sidechain compatible with Ethereum launched

SmartBCH, the Ethereum-compatible Bitcoin Cash sidechain, has announced the launch of its first three nodes. 

We are pleased to announce that we have launched smartBCH successfully with three nodes as the genesis validators: @btccom_official , @ViaBTC , and @realMatrixport. We appreciate all the help from the #BCH community! https://t.co/Umv6fGoeSY@wangkui0508 @JihanWu @rogerkver

— smartBCH (@SmartBCH) July 31, 2021

SmartBCH is now operational with validator nodes from BTC.com, ViaBTC and Matrixport. Other validators will be elected by the miners in the future. 

SmartBCH has new features to improve EVM’s operations and make the job of dApp developers easier, and it reorders transactions in a pseudo-random manner to prevent validators from sorting transactions more profitably.

In addition, the development team also announced that they will soon release some guides for BCH owners to help them experiment with the new sidechain, and transfer coins with the current gateway.

The goal of smartBCH is to explore new ideas to unlock new possibilities, as its compatibility with the EVM and Ethereum’s Web3 API provides high throughput for dApps that want to be fast, secure and decentralized.

For example, the presence of DeFi protocols on Bitcoin Cash could be strengthened.

A sidechain for Bitcoin Cash on its birthday

This launch coincided with the day before the fourth anniversary of Bitcoin Cash’s birth, the first of August. 

In fact, BCH was born on 1 August 2017 as a fork of bitcoin, and has subsequently been in turn forked twice, with BSV (Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision) and BCHA (Bitcoin Cash ABC). 

However, of these forks, BCH is certainly the most successful, as evidenced by its market capitalization of almost $10 billion, compared to about two and a half billion for BSV and a single billion for BCHA. Bitcoin (BTC), on the other hand, exceeds $700 billion in market capitalization. 

BCH is becoming something different from BTC, being more of a platform for the development of decentralized tools than a financial asset with a deflationary nature. 

In the last four years, several projects have been developed on BCH with the creation of new crypto instruments, although the price has not benefited much. 

The current value of Bitcoin Cash is around $530, and is still hugely below its peak of $3,785 in December 2017. However, it has grown by 86% in the past year, after falling to a low of $76 in December 2018. 

To celebrate its fourth anniversary, Satoshi’s Angels have decided to hold a commemorative live stream during which an airdrop of BCH will take place one day before the event.