Bitmain: User Activated Hard Fork (UAHF) - BIP148 Contingency Plan

Ahead of the August 1 deadline, the “showdown” between UAHF (User Activated Hard Fork) and UASF (User Activated Soft Fork) has been widely publicized within the community, with critics on both sides.

Many people say that UAHF is too controlling and goes against the concept of Bitcoin, but the fact that most companies face is the need for expansion. According to its supporters, UAHF expands through existing guidance while retaining previous transaction history and providing overall stability for Bitcoin.

In a public statement yesterday, Bitmain, a well-known Chinese mining and chip manufacturer, announced its contingency plan after the UASF is deployed. The company expressed its strong support for UAHF and pointed out that even if UASF cannot be activated, UAHF will protect transactions in the event of risks.

Bitmain said in a statement that UASF is high-risk, has no significant economic backing, and has no replay protection, and without an emergency plan it could easily lead to catastrophic consequences for the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Bitmain wrote that it would not immediately make the mined USHF blocks public on the network unless necessary. This means that Bitmain will mine this chain privately. Once the following situations occur, Bitmain will make these blocks public :

- BIP148 is successfully activated and subsequently receives a lot of support from the mining industry, i.e. after BIP148 successfully splits the chain;
- The market is calling for a large block hard fork, and economic logic drives them to mine UAHF blocks. For example, the coin price exchange rate shows a preference for large block Bitcoin;
- If a large number of miners are already publicly mining chains with large blocks, Bitcoin Mainland will also join in. That is, they will abandon the chains they have previously mined privately to ensure the security of the UAHF chain.

Additionally, the company said it will support the activation of Segregated Witness (SegWit) and code improvements to provide reliability and security.

Whatever happens, the company is confident that stability will support the transition. However, UASF means more complexity.