Bitcoin Core developer Cory Fields discovered a vulnerability in the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) consensus, which could have proven to be fatal to the network. He made public his findings in a long blog post.
“On April 25, 2018, I anonymously and privately disclosed a critical vulnerability in Bitcoin Cash, one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrencies — not to be confused with Bitcoin. A successful exploit of this vulnerability could have been so disruptive that transacting Bitcoin Cash safely would no longer be possible, completely undermining the utility (and thus the value) of the currency itself,” posted Fields.
The bug allowed for Bitcoin Cash network exploitation, and Fields expressed concern that if he revealed the bug someone might have immediately exploited it, and he could be held responsible for the attack.
The weakness exposed by Fields could be named a “chain-splitting bug”. Due to a missed check in transaction verification, the different versions of the code could place certain users on two separate chains which are incompatible.
Taking into consideration the distribution of the versions among nodes and users, attaining consensus again and settling the validity of transactions would be a difficult task to reproduce. The bug could have separated Bitcoin Cash into two networks, which would have decimated the coin’s value, stated Fields.
Fields is an employee at Digital Currencies Initiative at MIT Labs, and his main work centers on Bitcoin Core progress. His revelation prompted even more critics to express their opinion regarding the Bitcoin Cash project, which according to some had a very speedy development. The Bitcoin ABC team recently revealed the upcoming updates which will be released, which will be incorporated in a scheduled hard fork in November.
The BCH market price is still down, with less than 16% this week, currently having a price of $601 USD. Currently, more than 61% of all BCH are traded against Tether (USDT), signifying speculative trading and a prospect a possible drop in prices.