Weekly musing #19 - A new beginning and a new hope
Bitcoin Cash
This week has seen adoption by the first merchants such as Keyois, the manufacturers of the Keyois Capsule (a stylish and secure storage device for paper wallets), and Keys4Coins, a PC games store. Rocketr's new Bitcoin Cash payment option is a great solution for merchants wishing to get on board.
Reddit users are also setting up a tip bot which seems to be progressing nicely.
There is a lot of positive momentum, but the recent price rises in Bitcoin have been stealing some of the excitement. At the same time, a rise in the Bitcoin transaction backlog due to this market action is putting the spotlight on the shortcomings of the legacy chain. With every further wave of problems (high fees, erratic/long confirmation times) on Bitcoin, more users will realize that these problems do not need to exist, and that Bitcoin Cash can offer a better future.
Bitcoin ABC
As a matter of first priority ABC developers are trying to reproduce and fix issues reported by users.
Several users reported interoperability problems based on the 'bitcoin:' URI scheme being associated with payment on the existing Bitcoin chain.
Discussion about a new URI prefix has converged on 'bitcoincash:' among after some initial to-and-fro on the bitcoin-ml mailing list, Github and other discussion forums.
Bitcoin ABC's next release should support this new scheme, as well as roll out optional support for new network magic.
Some wallet related issues to do with import of BTC private keys and potential problems with long inter-block times are being followed up too.
Next steps will involve enforcing new network magic, cleaning up the logical separation in terms of software package names and resources such as data directory and registry entries. Also, a new address scheme will need to be coordinated to reduce the chance of accidentally sending coins of the wrong type.