The Strange Story behind the Seventh Resignation from Bitcoin Unlimited

Edit: 2 April. In the light of Shammah’s correction of 15th to 8th December, being no longer inconsistent with my first-hand knowledge of the matter, I now make some revisions to this article. His additional change of the 10th to the 3rd for parting with ABC is yet another twist muddying the waters. *sigh*

Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) has suffered the departure of seven members in 2019. In my opinion as President of BU, they are all due to the Bitcoin Cash /BSV community polarisation after the 15 November general upgrade, or hard-fork. Interestingly, three are BSV supporters while four are BCH supporters, leaving little change likely in the overall direction of BU and its 40 remaining members. Actually, since the resignations, BU is now +1 for BCH overall as Amaury Sêchet last voted in favour of BSV on a BUIP concerning which coins to maintain funds.

The Seventh Resignation

This is from Shammah Chancellor, and can be found on a signed blog post, linked by him in Twitter, rather than posted in the bitco.in/forum where BU has its membership-related matters handled. Nevertheless, it requires more than a simple acknowledgement and farewell, because it starts with a fake history timeline and descends into a hit-piece. The Shammah we thought we knew had too much integrity to write such words, and would not easily stoop to such depths. Something serious has affected him.

Shammah Chancellor, (near center), looking weary and lonely in Hong Kong, days after being ejected from the ABC development team (distant right).

Legal Notice via Process Server

So, what is the strange story behind this resignation from BU?
Shammah writes:

On December 15th, 2018, I was served paperwork for a lawsuit against myself and several other corporations and individuals.

On the 15th, Shammah was in Hong Kong, having arrived from California. I bumped into him in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Kowloon East, about early afternoon that day. We took the opportunity to sit down have a chat in the lobby bar, but only I had a drink as he reminded me that he did not touch alcohol. The first thing that struck me was that he looked like he was at a funeral. His mood was very subdued. A great weight was on his shoulders and he explained about having been served paperwork in a lawsuit affecting ABC, but gave no detail except that he was the only one served notice, thus far. He needed time out from Bitcoin Cash to get a fresh start and find some work, perhaps by February 2019.

I was sympathetic to him, and said that if he wanted work at that time, to let me know and I would discuss with the BU developers what work we could offer when he was ready.

The strong impression I got on the 15th was that he had been in receipt of the legal notice for some days. This is now verified as he has since amended the 15th to the 8th.

Shammah gave further information about the 10th:

On December 10th of 2018, by mutual decision, I stopped being a maintainer for Bitcoin ABC. This happened primarily due to differences in work styles between Amaury Séchet and myself.

This date has also since been revised to the 3rd. Well, he seems determined that he parted ways with ABC before receiving notice of legal action. Maybe it’s true, maybe not, his faulty memory means that this is uncertain.

If Shammah only had “differences in work styles” with Amaury, it is still surprising how these dev issues could trump the far larger matter of Shammah receiving notice of legal proceedings against him.

Whatever differences of opinion about working styles or software development should have been quickly forgotten as team solidarity returned in the face of a far larger problem for them. After all, this is the same legal proceeding which has been cited in several resignations from BU, apparently because BU as an organization, or the BU members individually(!?), are not taking a stance on the legal matter. It still looks like ABC had little sympathy for him. He was simply thrust out into the cold and must have felt terrible.

Why did Shammah then fly half-way around the world to attend a conference where he was meant to be representing ABC, days after being ejected from it? The conference could have been about flower arranging or Patagonian geology as far as he cared. The answer is clearly that he wanted the chance of in-person discussions, to receive help in defending the lawsuit, to get some solidarity from colleagues with whom he had worked closely for a year. A picture is worth a thousand words, and shows just how well this worked out for him.

We come to the remainder of the resignation, which is completely unnecessary, vicious, and can only be described as a hit-piece on BU. Strange that the people who reached out to him sympathetically get this treatment. I assume one of the following:

• he was paid for writing it
• he was ordered to write it
• he has reluctantly appended someone else’s writing, as part of a wider offensive against diverse organizations within the BCH ecosystem

Hmm, the last possibility chimes with what we are seeing lately.

For the historical record, the elected officers of BU regard the legal action against ABC and other parties, as reprehensible, and we hope it soon runs into the sand.

Honour and Dishonour is Measured in Actions

When I, and also the Lead Developer at BU, Andrew Stone, both heard from Shammah that he was no longer working with ABC as well as in receipt of notice of legal proceedings against him, we independently gave him moral support, a friendly ear. We recognised his track record and put aside significant historical differences of BCH development opinion. We offered him piece-work at BU so that he would have a source of income, if he wanted it.

It must be said that Shammah is a tough person to deal with in inter-group relations. For a year he was solid in defending ABC’s interests and the integrity of the bitcoincash.org umbrella for all the development teams. He said what he thought, worked extremely hard and many in the BCH development community saw him as Amaury’s right-hand man at ABC. Nevertheless, we at BU were sincere in offering to help him with work in a time of distress, when cast out by those he had long considered friends. However, by mid-March, Shammah finally declined any work at BU.

Contrast this with the reaction from the Lead Developer of ABC who continued to ostracise Shammah. The ABC team have since recovered some level of collegiality with Shammah, possibly because several have now been served with legal proceedings, putting them on an equal basis. It should not have needed that in the first place!

What a shame the new-found collegiality then preceded unwarranted lashing out against BU. The BU organisation did all it could to prevent the 15 November 2018 persistent fork. We knew it would become responsible for so much set-back to the coin value, network effect and Bitcoin Cash community. Sadly, we have been proven correct, but still remain hopeful and remain working for its long-term prospects.