Bitcoin Cash vs. Bitcoin SV: What Data Tells Us 10 Months After the Hash Wars
By: Jesus Rodriguez
Tags: Intotheblock, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Data Science, Bitcoin

November 2018 marked another pivotal moment for the crypto industry with the creation of Bitcoin Satoshi Vision(BSV) which quickly rose to the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap. The new crypto-asset was the result of a bitter technical and ideological battle between two factions of the Bitcoin Cash(BCH) community which ended up in one of the most aggressive hard forks in the history of crypto markets. During that time, both groups drew passionate and very vocal followers which certainly helped BSV gain certain prominence. However, ten months after the hard-fork, blockchain datasets reveal some very interesting insights about the health of both BCH and BSV. The IntoTheBlock platform recently added full support for BSV and I thought it would be a good idea to look at the data in comparison to BCH.

The Origins of BSV

BCH came into existence in August 2017 as a result of a debate over the block size of the Bitcoin network. Just over a year into its existence, BCH experienced the same challenges that triggered its creation when the community split in two over some proposed changes to the network. On August 20, 2018, Bitcoin Cash Adjustable Blocksize Cap (Bitcoin Cash ABC, BCH ABC), which at the time was the largest software client for the blockchain, announced a hard fork slated for November 15, 2018. A part of the announcement read:

“A new opcode called OP_CHECKDATASIG that improves the BCH scripting language to permit the validation of messages from outside the blockchain.

The introduction of canonical transaction ordering.

Several minor technical fixes and improvements.”

A faction within the Bitcoin Cash community, led by Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre, disagreed vociferously with these proposed technical updates. Wright was particularly vocal against the need for smart contracts while Ayre didn’t think miners will support canonical transaction ordering. Their group proposed to restore “the original Satoshi protocol” by changing the BCH structure. Specifically, the plan involves entirely overwriting the network scripts of Bitcoin ABC and increasing the block size of BCH from 32MB to a maximum of 128MB to elevate network capacity and scale. The result was a hard fork and the creation of BSV on November 15, 2018.

What followed after the fork was one of the craziest episodes in the history of crypto-markets with both parties racing to create blocks in their respective blockchains. Both groups shifted some of their mining power in the Bitcoin network to their blockchains creating artificial pressure on the price of BTC. While, the BCH ABC was ultimately successful and gained support of major exchanges, BSV was able to survive and was eventually adopted by several crypto markets. For the last ten months, both BCH and BSV have evolved as separate blockchains gaining relevant market positions. How do they compare now?

What Does Blockchain Data Tell Us About BCH vs. BSV

From financials to the composition of the network, there are several dimensions on which we can compare BCH and BSV. Let’s explore some of the most revealing insights that come from analyzing the blockchain datasets of BCH and BSV respectively.

Both Networks are Growing at a Similar Rate

IntoTheBlock’s Address analysis reveals that the growth patterns on both BCH and BSV are relatively similar with BSV growing a tiny bit faster.