Bitcoin SV (BSV) Chain Forks to Produce Rogue Block

After a scheduled hard fork, an accidental side chain was created, which existed for only one block and was abandoned.

The Bitcoin SV (BSV) chain changed rules in a planned hard fork, and a miner produced a rogue block exploiting a loophole. But the chain did not split off, as only one rogue block was produced. The fork was deemed a success, for expanding the allowed block size to 2 GB.

A large block size is the chief aim of Bitcoin SV, a project dedicated to on-chain scaling. This also means that BSV would rely on known miners with dedicated hardware, instead of anonymous voluntary block producers. Distributing big blocks through the network is also harder.

The Bitcoin SV network also has a relatively low hashrate, with the cost of a one-hour attack standing at $8,439, pointing to lower security in comparison to more actively mined coins.

The Bitcoin SV network has 431 nodes, according to CoinDance, a much lower number compared to Bitcoin’s network of above 10,000 nodes. A large block may be easier to move through the smaller network. The aim of Bitcoin SV is to scale to the equivalent of thousands of transactions per second while keeping the traditional 10-minute block time.

In the past, large blocks have caused problems for the BSV blockchain, creating the need for a reorg, an event that is not supposed to happen. A reorg overwrites blockchain history and may undermine trust in the protocol.

But the theoretical possibility for transactions does not reflect the real network use. The Bitcoin SV network carries around 100,000 transactions in 24 hours, still much lower compared to Bitcoin, which moves between 300 and 400,000 transactions a day.

The market price for BSV sank again on Friday as markets weakened overall. BSV traded at $157.39, recouping 12% to its price in the past week, but still at a shaky junction. BSV is still a rather liquid coin, trading with more than $340 million’s equivalent in daily volumes. The reason for this is that BSV was automatically listed to all exchanges that carried Bitcoin Cash (BCH). However, Binance and Kraken went on to delist the coin, due to the team’s attempted doxxing against the influential anonymous @hodlonaut account.