In 2017, a veritable civil war was fought between camps of Bitcoin believers: those who sought to keep its “block size” at 1MB, and those who wanted to increase it.
Those looking for bigger blocks found themselves rallying behind a then-new cryptocurrency – a “hard fork” of Bitcoin called Bitcoin Cash (BCH) – whose premise rested on re-creating Bitcoin to mine 8MB blocks.
The idea was (and still is) that larger blocks technically allow for more transactions to be confirmed at once, as you can fit more of them into a single block. This supposedly makes a blockchain more efficient.
As it turns out, Bitcoin Cash has never, ever, mined a block that is 8MB in size, reports cryptocurrency research group LongHash.
In fact, over the past 500 days, Bitcoin blocks have been 30 times bigger than BCH blocks, on average.
Remember: the big stink made by Bitcoin Cash was that Bitcoin‘s blocks are simply too small.
According to LongHash, the average block size of Bitcoin Cash $BCH▼0.25% has been 171KB since its inception in August 2017. This represents just 2.1 percent of BCH’s limit (8MB).
“There has only been one day so far where BCH blocks have been more than half full. On January 15, 2018, one year ago today, BCH blocks averaged 59 [percent] of their total capacity,” declared LongHash.
When comparing activity between the two blockchains over the past month, things look even more grim for BCH.
Indeed, in the last 30 days, the average size of BCH blocks was 34KB. That’s just 3.7 percent of the average size of Bitcoin‘s blocks, which was found to be 923KB.
LongHash noted this ratio is actually analogous to their market caps – BCH’s is currently just 3.6 percent of Bitcoin‘s.
“Some will claim that it’s a positive sign that BCH blocks are not near their capacity, but others will point to the lack of interest in BCH as concerning,” the analysts concluded.
Published January 17, 2019 — 17:01 UTC
