Bitcoin Cash Miners Propose Controversial Soft Fork for Zcash-Style Development Fund

A group of bitcoin cash miners is preparing a soft fork to redirect some of the block rewards into a new zcash-style development fund.

In a medium post Wednesday, Jiang Zhuoer, CEO of mining pool BTC.TOP, said that a group of some of the largest bitcoin cash mining pools were preparing to soft fork the network to implement a "Short-term donation plan" that would cut block rewards by 12.5 percent in order to fund network development.

"We can avoid these problems by providing an adequate level of stable funding, allowing Bitcoin Cash to thrive and succeed."

A report by crypto investment firm Electric Capital found bitcoin cash lost more than 30 percent of its developers between December 2018 and June 2019, the largest drop of any major blockchain network.

Because bitcoin cash uses the same SHA-256 hash algorithm as bitcoin, most of the block reward costs will, according to the post, be carried by the dominant bitcoin miners who constitute approximately 97 percent of the hash ecosystem.

Assuming bitcoin cash stays at around $300, Zhuoer calculates the new mechanism could raise more than $6 million in six months.

Zhuoer's post says that BCH blocks that don't follow the soft fork "Will be orphaned," meaning that they won't be accepted by the five mining pools and risk not receiving any block reward whatsoever.

In an ask-me-anything reddit session Thursday, Zhuoer clarified that miners would "Ensure the transparency and effective use of all funds" by the Hong Kong corporation.

It's also disputed whether the five mining pools will be able to force the community to accept their soft fork.

At press time, the signatories had a combined BCH hashrate of just under 28 percent, way below the required majority needed to push the soft fork through by themselves.