nChain Bitcoin SV Alpha Launches as Bitcoin Cash’s Satoshi Vision Mining Debate Thickens

This Wednesday Nchain published the much anticipated Bitcoin SV codebase. The alpha released was done in order to show the code to miners and pool operators. Additionally, a mining pool called ‘SV Pool’ was announced which allows miners to point their hashrate at the SV client.

The company says they expect to distribute a more elegant variant during the first week of September. The current alpha code is based on Bitcoin ABC 17.2 with some variations which include a new soft limit of 32MB, OP_MUL, OP_INVERT, LSHIFT and RSHIFT integration, the limit of 201 opcodes per script has been removed, and the automatic replay protection for November 15, 2018, was dismissed.

As of now, there is not much of a reference in the code towards the 128MB block size increase, which has caused some arguing among the community. But there has been a functional tests addition implemented to the code seven days ago which says, “Add a couple of new functional tests to check for being able to set the block size flags via the bitcoind.conf file and to check if we can actually process 128M blocks.” Many people believe after the initial alpha code release there will be new changes to the code going forward.

Their Github repository says:

“This is an Alpha release, the purpose of which is to provide a preview of the code in response to requests from miners and pool operators,”

In addition to the alpha code release, a mining pool has begun so miners can point their hashrate to the Bitcoin SV client. The website Svpool.net leads to the SV Pool’s registration page which illustrates a circular picture of a Chinese dragon and a welcome message addressed in Chinese as well. A crude interpretation of the website states: “Welcome to SV Pool — We are a brand new public pool, in line with the original Nakamoto vision and Bitcoin SV agreement. Pre-register to get updates — We will release the initial version of the public pool in September and the full version in November.

https://twitter.com/ProfFaustus/status/1034869051254693889