There is no boring day in the world of Bitcoin Cash lately. Even though this altcoin has not been around that long, it already made a significant impact to the cryptocurrency sphere. Right now, it appears all of the new hashrate landing on the network has already pulled out again. Interestingly enough, someone successfully triggered the mining difficulty adjustment again to make finding blocks a lot easier.The “gaming” of the BCH mining difficulty adjustment continues unabated. More EDA Tricks to Keep Bitcoin Cash Ahead? There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes of Bitcoin Cash which leave most people baffled.
There is no boring day in the world of Bitcoin Cash lately. Even though this altcoin has not been around that long, it already made a significant impact to the cryptocurrency sphere. Right now, it appears all of the new hashrate landing on the network has already pulled out again. Interestingly enough, someone successfully triggered the mining difficulty adjustment again to make finding blocks a lot easier.The “gaming” of the BCH mining difficulty adjustment continues unabated.
More EDA Tricks to Keep Bitcoin Cash Ahead?
There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes of Bitcoin Cash which leave most people baffled. One of the main issues is the EDA, or Elastic Difficulty Adjustment algorithm used to determine the current network mining difficulty. This algorithm has been all over the place, indicating at least one entity has successfully triggered it on demand. We have documented what the possible reasons for this could be in articles here and here. There is clearly some manipulation going on to inflate the mining income.
It seems the network hashrate is going through a rollercoaster ride of its own. A few days ago, virtually all major mining pools flocked to Bitcoin Cash in an effort to “help the network.” However, keeping the EDA shenanigans in mind, it seems this was more of an attempt to mine some coins pretty quickly and bail out when the network difficulty increased to a high rate. That change did occur three days ago when the mining difficulty for BCH went from 7% to 30% of the original network.
This increased difficulty made it extremely unprofitable to mine BCH, which also explains why the network hashrate dropped from 3.2 Exohash back to below 400 petahash. This chart will keep fluctuating up and down, depending on how often someone successfully triggers the EDA to make mining easier. Right now the trigger is active again, as the mining difficulty sits at 10% of the Bitcoin chain. Blocks are being found on the network just minutes apart, which keeps the chain going for the time being. Additionally, it also makes mining BCH slightly more profitable, although the margin is almost negligible.
However, with the hashrate dropping when things become too difficult and unprofitable to mine, the bigger question who is triggering this EDA bug. It is certainly possible the BCH developers are behind these changes, although that would not necessarily improve things for them in the long term. Now that all mining pools are back just due to a sliver of profitability, the plot only thickens. So far, the only pools mining BCH through thick and thin are ViaBTC and the unknown mining entity.
There is a lot more going on behind the scenes of the Bitcoin Cash than people are willing to admit. Everything related to its mining ecosystem raises more questions than answers and no one is officially responding to these claims either. People are left in the dark while speculation runs wild. This either indicates the development team is pulling strings behind the scenes or they have bitten off more than they can chew. A solution and explanation for this “gamification of the mining difficulty” needs to be provided sooner rather than later. The BCH community deserves to know what is going on behind the scenes.
At the same time, one cannot deny the Bitcoin network hashrate is climbing back up. All pools temporarily switching to BCH have been going back and forth on their decision. It makes sense to choose the most profitable currency at any given time. However, it would be in the best interest of these companies to take a stance and stick with it once and for all. Let the miners swap between chains on their own, or keep mining one solution and nothing else.