Mining pool Bitcoin.com will not now support the controversial bitcoin cash development fund proposal without broader agreement from the community.
In a blog post published earlier on Tuesday, Bitcoin.com said it would no longer back the existing plan for a dev fund unveiled last week by the CEO of mining pool BTC.TOP, Jiang Zhuoer.
âBitcoin.com will not risk a chain split or a change to the underlying economics,â reads the Bitcoin.com blog post. âAny proposal will need to have as many people of economic weight on board as possible, including businesses, exchanges, miners, and Bitcoin Cash implementations.â
Last weekâs proposal, which was signed by Roger Ver, executive chairman of Bitcoin.com, as well as Jihan Wu of Antpool/BTC.com and ViaBTCâs Haipo Yang, called for a 12.5 percent share of the block reward to be redirected to a new zcash-style development fund. At the time, the group said it could fund long-term development and give ecosystem members a role in deciding which projects get funded.
Although the proposal was met with some support, critics pointed out there were many underspecified aspects of the proposal â such as the âHong Kong corporationâ that would coordinate and pay for network development â as well as the âno-debateâ clause that meant any miners who didnât support the soft fork risked having their blocks orphaned.
By withdrawing support, Bitcoin.com said there would be a âgreat opportunityâ for users to say what they need and for developers to put together clear funding proposals.
âIn business, you do not begin with a pot of money then figure out something to do with it. You begin with an idea of what needs to be done and then allocate funds to achieve it. This makes all parties involved more accountable and more efficient,â according to the mining pool.
The news comes after an anonymous âopposing miner group,â which claims to control roughly a quarter of total networkâs mining hashrate, threatened Monday to itself hard fork bitcoin cash. Although âempatheticâ to protocol developers, the group said it was âtotally unfair and unethicalâ that a small group of mining pools were trying to force the ecosystem to accept a compulsory charge they had not agreed to.
In response, the mining group said it would transfer hashrate from signatory pools and âlaunch a competing BCH pool to offer a voice to miners that disagree with the proposal.â The post added that should signatories continue with the unamended proposal, they would âmine up to the hard fork, which will create our own chain after the forkâ with more hashrate than âthe signatories can muster.â
In an update Tuesday, the anonymous mining group said it had âtaken noticeâ of Bitcoin.comâs post and would stand down and ânot start our competing pool.â âWe trust Bitcoin.com are going to be able to convince the rest of the signatories to severely amend the IFP [invitation for proposal],â it adds.
Bitcoin.com will now work with the ecosystem to develop a new plan âthat is profitable for all the relevant parties and which preserves the fundamental economics of Bitcoin Cash.â
âNo proposal should put this goal at risk,â the post reads. Although some sort of a funding plan is required, âit cannot come at the expense of compromising the foundational goals of Bitcoin Cash,â the pool said.
In an email to CoinDesk Monday, Ver said he was âmostly just along for the ride on this one.â
It is unclear if the remaining three signatories will continue to support the existing proposal.