BitMEX Releases ForkMonitor to Allow Crypto Community to Closely Follow Network Upgrades

BitMEX Releases ForkMonitor to Allow the Community to Closely Follow Network Upgrades

BitMEX Research has launched a new tool known as ForkMonitor.info that would allow interested users to monitor the situation during network upgrades. The information was released on November 5 by BitMEX Research.

The ForkMonitor.info is connected to nodes on two networks, Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The decision to launch it comes just a few days before the upcoming Bitcoin Cash hard fork. Nevertheless, the blog post released by BitMEX explains that the intention is to focus on Bitcoin rather than on Bitcoin Cash.

During the last months, BitMEX has been supporting Bitcoin and not Bitcoin Cash. This is something that has divided the community in the last years. The discussion is around whether or not to scale using on-chain mechanism or off-chain solutions. Bitcoin Cash supporters believe that the best way to solve scalability issues is by increasing block sizes, while BTC supporters are currently waiting for an off-chain scaling solutions known as Lightning Network (LN).

On November 15, Bitcoin Cash will experience a new hard fork. There are three competing chains.

Bitcoin ABC seems to be the most popular implementation and could be supported by most of the Bitcoin Cash users. It is not possible to know what will happen with older versions of Bitcoin ABC.

Bitcoin SV (Satoshi’s Vision) is promoted by Craig Wright and might have a limited support from Bitcoin Cash supporters. Despite this, several important Bitcoin Cash mining pools are affiliated with Wright. Some of these mining pools are Coingeek, BMG Pool and SV Pool. These have 44% of the market share.

There is another group that is known as Bitcoin unlimited. The client is designed to follow the hard fork of Bitcoin ABC, but earlier versions may behave in a different way.

BitMEX Research explains that it seems that a majority will be supporting Bitcoin ABC’s hard fork. Nevertheless, there is nothing confirmed about what can happen once the chains split.

About it, BitMEX Research wrote:

“While it appears that the economic majority will support Bitcoin ABC’s hardfork, there is significant uncertainty over how each client will behave and which chains they will follow. Therefore, BitMEX Research has sponsored this new website which has launched before the hardfork is due to occur. This will hopefully provide useful information to some stakeholders, as the events get underway next week.”

BitMEX is one of the largest and most important cryptocurrency exchanges all over the world in terms of trading volume. What will happen with Bitcoin Cash and the different forks is not clear.