Topic: (2017-10-19) Indian Bitcoin Exchange Unocoin to Follow Majority Chain Post-SegWi (Read 337 times)

Indian Bitcoin Exchange Unocoin to Follow Majority Chain Post-SegWit2x

Indian bitcoin exchange Unocoin has revealed its stance on the upcoming SegWit2x hard fork, stating that it will only support the majority blockchain following the split.

Unocoin to Follow Majority Blockchain

The startup made this announcement in a blog post, assuring its users that it will give them access to coins on both blockchains if a blockchain split occurs following the SegWit2x fork, which is scheduled for mid-November. However, it only intends to offer INR trading pairs for the majority blockchain, so users will have to withdraw coins from the minority chains into other wallets.

Unocoin says that they will determine the majority chain based on both mining and community support and will provide users to access to the minority coins within two weeks of the fork. The company adds that customers must withdraw the minority coins within four weeks of the split.

It is not surprising that Unocoin intends to base its decision on mining hashrate. The company is a New York Agreement signatory and was included in the list of SegWit2x supporters that were publicly denounced by Bitcoin.org.

Moreover, the exchange recently announced a partnership with bitcoin wallet Blockchain to enable Indian users to purchase bitcoins from Unocoin from within their Blockchain wallet. Since Blockchain plans to follow the chain with the most accumulated difficulty, chaos would ensue if the two companies were supporting separate chains.

Unocoin Policy Raises Questions

However, the Unocoin SegWit2x policy raises several questions. First, the company states that intend to consider “community support” alongside mining hashrate. How will that be measured, and what will the exchange do if miners support one chain and the community supports the other?

Second, the company’s policy includes this somewhat-curious statement:

“All our customers holding any amount of bitcoin in their Unocoin wallet before the event of the fork would be entitled to an equivalent amount of coins on both the chains after the split. There is no action required from customers in this regard either before or during the fork as long as the replay protection is available.”

It is not immediately clear what the company means when it states that customers do not need to take any action as long as replay protection is available. SegWit2x leaders including Jeff Garzik and Mike Belshe have signaled ardent opposition to opt-out replay protection, which would automatically protect users from replay attacks. Garzik is developing opt-in replay protection, but this will require user activation, a process that may be too complicated for people who are not tech-savvy. It is possible that Unocoin means that they will “taint” the coins to protect them from replay attacks before users are able to withdraw them, but this is not clear from the post.

CCN reached out to Unocoin for clarification about these issues and will update the article if they respond.

Source - https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/indian-bitcoin-exchange-unocoin-to-follow-majority-chain-post-segwit2x/