If you hold bitcoin before the BitcoinSC hard fork, you can import those coins to BSC Core to claim BSC. There are two ways to accomplish this:

1. Import wallet and password from Bitcoin Core to BSC Core (copy wallet.dat file). This assumes you do not have existing BSC in the BSC wallet.

2. Import private keys from a Bitcoin wallet to BSC Core. This approach works with a new BSC wallet or one with existing BSC coins.

Import Wallet

The wallet.dat file holds data for operating the wallet, including private keys. Use File — Import wallet, or you can simply move the wallet.dat file:

A. Exit Bitcoin Core.
B. Find the “wallet.dat” file in the Bitcoin Core data directory -> wallets directory, and make a copy.
C. Copy the “wallet.dat” file into the BSC Core data directory -> wallets directory as “wallet.dat”
D. Launch BSC Core. Make a backup of the wallet.

Bitcoin data directory locations https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory BitcoinSC follows the same pattern.

Import Private Key

Importing the private key gives more flexibility to import Bitcoin from a variety of wallets.

On Bitcoin Core use the “dumpprivkey” command with for the address.

On Electrum, use Addresses then right-click on the desired address, choose “Private key”, enter the password, and copy the private key

To import on BSC Core use the “importprivkey” command. The wallet will Rescan.

About Addresses

The address format is identical between Bitcoin and BitcoinSC which means that addresses are not restricted for use between wallets. Please exercise caution because post-fork BSC can be sent to Bitcoin addresses and vice versa. If this happens with addresses where you have access to private keys, the coins can be recovered as shown above. If you transpose addresses sending coins to an exchange (exchanges TBD) only the exchange could recover the coins if they wanted to do that.

Legacy, p2sh-SegWit, bech32

Legacy, p2sh-SegWit, and bech32 addresses and coins can be imported from Bitcoin to BitcoinSC using the techniques above. If a Bitcoin legacy private key is imported to BSC Core, then BSC Core will create 3 public addresses for legacy, p2sh-SegWit, and bech32.

More

Twitter — twitter.com/bitcoinSC_

Telegram — t.me/bitcoinscofficial

Reddit — reddit.com/user/bitcoinSCofficial

Discord — discord.gg/YNYcxjM

Live testnet3 addresses and private keys are shown above.

As most people know, the mining difficulty for Bitcoin adjusts every 2,016 blocks, about two weeks. “Difficulty” is how difficult it is using Proof of Work to mine a block, and for Bitcoin (and most forks) difficulty is adjusted every 2,016 blocks.

The brilliant algorithm designed by Satoshi allowed difficulty to adjust over 13 orders of magnitude (so far), for example:

For any decentralized network, using difficulty with a random SHA-256 hash result (e.g., hash < target) gives some variation in block spacing (the time between two block). While the average block spacing is 600 seconds, the standard deviation for Bitcoin block spacing is also in the range of 600 seconds, with some 95% of block spacing distribution taking place in less than approximately 1,725 seconds.

Since BitcoinSC will support smart contract operations, and since not much has changed in regards to block spacing 11 years on, the BitcoinSC devs took a fresh look at the difficulty adjustment approach for improvements. The resulting BitcoinSC algorithm adjusts difficulty for every new block like other more recent blockchains, using an exponential moving average.

The charts below show the difficulty adjustment for Bitcoin vs. BitcoinSC for a block spacing comparison. First, here is Bitcoin navigating a recent difficulty adjustment after a “historic” drop in hash rate (1):

This chart shows a recent difficulty adjustment for Bitcoin. The chart estimated hash rate and difficulty are scaled to show timing only, but the green dashed arrow shows an estimated hash rate drop of approximately 40%. The daily average spacing for blocks 621,600 to 623,000 floats up to almost 900 seconds for some days, because the hash rate dropped significantly and difficulty couldn’t catch up until block 622,944 on March 25th.

Then there are other times when the difficulty drops before the adjustment and rebounds precipitously after, causing the blocks to be mined in less than 10 minutes.

For grins and giggles we tried a similar sized hash rate change with the blockchain simulator (using the self-same block-by-block difficulty adjustment algorithm) set for a 50% step reduction in hash rate and got these results:

As with the above chart, the simulated hash rate and difficulty are scaled to show timing only, but the daily average block spacing (seconds) scale is identical to the Bitcoin chart above. It should be inherently obvious to the casual observer that the BitcoinSC difficulty adjustment gives a smoother adjustment to keep average block spacing ever so much closer to 600 seconds.

As compared to the Bitcoin difficulty adjustment algorithm, BitcoinSC makes these improvements:

⦁ Rapid response to hash rate changes for difficulty (no waiting up to 2 weeks)

⦁ No concerns over miners joining, leaving or using miner arbitrage (jumping between PoW chains depending on slowly-adjusting difficulty)

⦁ More accurate average confirmation spacing for transactions, albeit with the inherent variation from the SHA-256 random number generator.

May all your difficulty adjustments be smooth and prosperous; we hope Satoshi agrees.

Reference

1. A Historic Difficulty Adjustment https://messari.io/article/a-historic-difficulty-adjustment

More

Twitter — twitter.com/bitcoinSC_
Telegram — t.me/bitcoinscofficial
Reddit — reddit.com/user/bitcoinSCofficial
Discord — discord.gg/YNYcxjM

You have questions, we have answers.

Q: What is the motivation of BSC?

A: Bitcoin is by far the cryptocurrency that has the highest market value, the largest number of users, and is the most influential crypto. However, Bitcoin’s scripts aren’t Turing complete and cannot support the application of complex logic. Smart contracts cannot be implemented on the Bitcoin system. BSC integrates the functions of smart contracts for the Bitcoin system, giving developers the ability to build decentralized applications on Bitcoin. BSC combines the unlimited creative space of smart contracts and the huge network effect of Bitcoin, which will bring more unknown possibilities to the blockchain field.

Q: Is there any reward for users who sign to support the BSC project?

A: BTC holders can get BSC coins at a 1:1 ratio (for pre-fork BTC holdings) after the BSC hard fork is launched. The signature merely expresses support for the BSC project and will not provide additional rewards.

Comparison

Q: What is a Hard Fork of Bitcoin

A: Bitcoin’s hard fork refers to the blockchain formed by upgrading the Bitcoin protocol. The hard-forked blockchain will be compatible with Bitcoin’s historical data (blocks, transactions), and have modified parameters or add new functions. The famous Bitcoin hard forks in history include BCH and BSV.

Q: What is the main difference between Bitcoin and BSC?

A: Differences:
⦁ BSC supports EVM-based smart contracts.
⦁ BSC uses SHA3 + blake2b mining algorithm.
⦁ The upgrade direction of BSC depends on holders’ votes.
⦁ Increase max block size to 2 MB, adjustable on-chain up to 32 MB
⦁ Add governance contracts that allow system parameters, such as max block size, to be modified on-chain.

Q: What is the difference between BSC and other Bitcoin forks, like BCH and BSV?

A: BCH and BSV only adjusted the protocol parameters based on Bitcoin. Their main adjustment was to modify the max block size so that the network can support more transactions. The maximum block originally allowed by BTC was 1 MB. In the current version, BCH has adjusted the max block size to 32 MB and BSV has adjusted to 2 GB. BSC upgraded the protocol on a larger scale. The biggest change is the embedded EVM, which gives BSC the ability to operate smart contracts.

Q: What is the difference between BSC and RSK (Rootstock)?

A: RSK is a side chain based on Bitcoin. Through the design of a two-way peg, the mutual mapping of RBTC on BTC and RSK is realized. BSC is a hard fork upgrade of BTC, compatible with BTC’s transaction history, and directly supports smart contracts on the chain.

Time

Q: When will BSC launch its mainnet?

A: The mainnet will be launched in June 2020, about one month after the Bitcoin halving. It will hard-fork Bitcoin at the height of 630,000 where the halving takes place.

Protocol

Q: What are the max block size and block interval of BSC?

A: The max block size is set to 2 MB initially and can be later modified by a smart contract. The block interval is 10 minutes, the same as Bitcoin.

Q: What How is the TPS (Transaction Per Second) of BSC?

A: As we double the max block size to 2 MB, the TPS of BSC is also twice as Bitcoin to be about 15 transactions per second. With the increase of max block size, TPS can theoretically reach up to nearly 10,000. But this will also increase the risk of the system being attacked, so we will adjust the max block size according to demand in the future.

Economy

Q: How to claim the BSC coin as a Bitcoin holder?

A: After the BSC mainnet is launched, you can import your private key or the entire wallet of Bitcoin to the BSC wallet. Then you can get the same amount of BSC, with replay protection.

Q: What is the block reward of BSC?

A: It’s the same as Bitcoin. The initial BSC block reward at height 630,000 will be is 6.25 BSC/block, and it will be halved every 210,000 blocks, about 4 years.

Q: When will BSC be listed on exchanges? Which exchange will it be listed on?

A: BSC is supposed to be listed on exchanges when launching the mainnet. But we are not sure which exchanges will be listing BSC at this time.

Mining

Q: Why choose the SHA-3 + BLAKE2b mining algorithm?

A: The consensus mechanism of BSC is PoW, which is consistent with BTC. After the BSC mainnet launch, the hashrate of the newly forked chain may be at a low level. If the same mining algorithm as BTC was used, the existing Bitcoin ASIC miners and large mining pools may put BSC under the risk of a 51% attack. Therefore, BSC uses the SHA3 + blake2b mining algorithm to replace the double SHA256 algorithm in Bitcoin, reducing the possibility of the system being attacked.

Q: What are the specs for a BSC miner?

A: Currently SHA-3 + BLAKE2b can only use GPUs for mining. As we know, there are also some ASIC miners in development, which may be available in the future.

Contract

Q: Is BSC’s EVM fully compatible with Ethereum?

A: Yes. This means that you can run smart contracts written by Solidity on Ethereum directly on BSC, such as ERC-20, OpenZeppelin, etc. The only difference is that the smallest unit of the coin has changed from Wei of Ethereum to Satoshi of Bitcoin. That is, 1 BSC is expressed in the contract as 10 ^ 8 instead of 10 ^ 18. Of course, the contract gas price will also be priced by BSC.

Testnet

Q: Is there a BSC testnet?

A: Yes, the Testnet will be available very soon in early April. Information about the Testnet will be shown on the website https://bsc.net/. The BSC testnet faucet will also be provided then.

Scalability

Q: Will BSC support SegWit? Will BSC support Lightning Network?

A: Yes, and Yes. BSC can do everything Bitcoin can do.

Q: Does BSC have replay protection for transactions vs. Bitcoin?

A: Yes. The detailed design can be seen from the whitepaper (https://docs.bsc.net/en/bsc_en.pdf).

Team

Q: This is really interesting and not your first rodeo. Who are you guys really?

A: Team:
⦁ BSC project is initiated by community developers based on their interests. Team members are anonymous;
⦁ If you have questions, you can contact the development team through Telegram;
⦁ The project is completely open-source, adopting the same open-source community operation model as Bitcoin;
⦁ No pre-mine;
⦁ No fundraising.

More information and send a signed transaction to show support https://bsc.net/

William G. for BSC.net

Written by Steven M.

To help understand the upcoming Bitcoin SC hard fork, this article will compare the hard forks for Bitcoin Cash (ABC) and Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, review the technical approach and parameters for these forks, and compare with Bitcoin SC’s approach.

Intro to Hard Forks

Blockchain hard forks happen when protocol or consensus rules are updated in node software to produce blocks and transactions that are not compatible with non-updated versions of nodes. This is generally described as the software not being “backward compatible” which is a bit of a misnomer, since the new version nodes are compatible with older blocks and transactions, thus preserving the full history of a blockchain. Node software enforces the protocol change at a block height certain. What is incompatible after a hard fork is the blocks going forward. After a hard fork, the blockchain is split and exists as two blockchains with separate characteristics.

For “consensus” hard forks, where the community agrees on the updates to a blockchain, a single “official” new blockchain will continue after the hard fork, and perhaps a split chain for laggards who didn’t update in time. However, if there is developer support for both chains after a hard fork, and technology — business — community interest in supporting two versions of the blockchain, the hard fork will give two blockchains going forward.

This report compares three blockchain splits from hard forks which are shown schematically below.

This timeline shows the Bitcoin Cash split from Bitcoin was on August 1, 2017, the Bitcoin SV split from Bitcoin Cash on November 15, 2018, and BitcoinSC will split from Bitcoin in the early May time frame at a block height 630,000.

Next, consideration of some of the technical issues for these hard forks.

Block Size

Block size is an important parameter in blockchain configuration since it controls scaling for transaction capacity, transactions per second, and node requirements. Block size has been a contentious issue in the blockchain community and has been a motivating factor for past chain splits.

Bitcoin launched with a 1.0 MB block size, and has retained this size although adjustments using block “weight” for SegWit transactions allow larger blocks. Bitcoin Cash launched with an initial block size of 8 MB, and hard forked in May 2018 to a size of 32 MB.

Bitcoin SV features very large blocks, launched with 128 MB, and implemented the Quasar protocol in July 2019 allowing blocks up to 2 GB.

Bitcoin SC will launch with 2.0 MB blocks and is scalable up to 32 MB size (plus the SegWit “weight” adjustment).

Another way to examine block size and TPS is to see actual usage of blocks on-chain. Blockchains are occasionally overloaded, but most run at a lesser capacity than full blocks.

getchaintxstats give some statistics for the blockchain capacity usage over the past 4,320 blocks or 30 days. Table 2 gives transactions during the last 30 days (window_tx_count) and TPS (txrate) and shows an actual usage rate over the last month of 3.4 TPS for Bitcoin, 0.5 TPS for Bitcoin Cash and 6.3 TPS for Bitcoin SV.

The commonly used value for Bitcoin TPS is 4, implying a transaction size of 417 bytes, and using SegWit transactions would give higher throughput. Bitcoin SC with 2 MB block size would give 2x Bitcoin TPS.

Block Height Delta

As you know, difficulty is adjusted every 2,016 blocks (~ 2 weeks) to maintain the 10-minute block spacing. In a perfect world, after splitting from the Bitcoin blockchain, the split chains would run block height roughly in sync with Bitcoin block height. However, various tweaks attempting to improve difficulty adjustment can decouple block height on the split chains.

By definition, at the hard fork block height, the main chain and split chain are exactly in sync. There are minimal practical issues with these different block heights, although it is nice when software does what you are expecting for block spacing. Perhaps the only implication for different block heights is that halvings will occur at different times, so more for reference, the approximate block height offsets are shown below.

Again, the practical implication of these block height offsets is that Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV will reach their halvings a little over a month earlier than Bitcoin.

Bitcoin SC may use a more frequent and gentler difficulty adjustment algo, effectively tracking closer to the Bitcoin block height.

Replay Attacks

Since the addresses, private keys and coins are otherwise identical between Bitcoin and a forked chain, developers of the new split chain can add replay protection. Without replay protection, a signed transaction from one chain will validate and execute on the split chain in a “replay attack”, as Ethereum discovered in 2016.

Bitcoin Cash added replay protection in their hard fork by adding a marker so that signatures wouldn’t match between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash (two-way replay protection). Bitcoin SV did not initially add replay protection (for philosophical reasons). Bitcoin SC will add replay protection using a modified signature similar to Bitcoin Cash.

Opcodes and Bytecodes

Bitcoin and its forks use script opcodes for basic programming operations executed on a stack. By design, script has limited capability for safety and of the ~100 opcodes available, relatively few are used for normal transactions (pay2pubkeyhash, multi-sig, etc.).

There is a slight variation in opcodes between these projects. Table 4 shows the count in current release GetOpName() function. The Bitcoin SV count includes 16 opcodes (OP_1 — OP16) for pushing onto the stack but otherwise is in the same size range as Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin SC, forked from Bitcoin v0.19, will include additional opcodes for interfacing with the smart contract layer, which will offer Turing-complete on-chain smart contract execution with ~100 bytecodes (e.g., a Constantinople-class virtual machine). In contrast to Bitcoin and these other forks, Bitcoin SC is a fully programmable blockchain, capable of running on-chain applications such as decentralized exchanges and DeFi solutions.

More info and sign your support for Bitcoin SC https://bsc.net/

Background

Bitcoin is by far the most successful cryptocurrency. After ten years of development, the concept of Bitcoin as a community currency has gained widespread acceptance. With the participation of more and more miners, exchanges, developers, and ordinary users, the network effect of Bitcoin is strong and growing. According to the latest data from CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin Dominance accounts for 65.4% of the total market value of cryptocurrency, which is unmatched by any other blockchain project.

However, this huge network effect has not spawned more valuable applications on the Bitcoin network. This is mainly due to the non-Turing complete script of Bitcoin, which cannot support the implementation of complex logic. Although Bitcoin uses non-Turing-complete scripts for security reasons, this undoubtedly sacrifices more possibilities for the Bitcoin ecosystem and hinders the further expansion of its network effect.

Smart contracts are Turing complete and can be used to develop complex DApps. But even though Ethereum and other blockchain projects support smart contracts, the user base and network effects pale in comparison to Bitcoin.

BSC = Bitcoin Users + Smart Contracts

We propose BSC (Bitcoin Smart Contract) in the whitepaper https://docs.bsc.net/en/bsc_en.pdf BSC will be a hard fork of Bitcoin, inheriting all the transaction history of Bitcoin, and will support smart contracts with unlimited flexibility. With the original user base and network effects of Bitcoin, BSC will enable DApps with real value.

Bitcoin users + smart contracts are likely to bring the entire industry into a new phase. Applications in the original smart contract ecosystem will likely bring qualitative changes with the help of Bitcoin’s network effect:

• BTC + Digital Assets. Bitcoin users and developers will be able to issue digital assets similar to ERC-20 on the BSC network. The Bitcoin network effect makes these assets potentially more useful and valuable.
• BTC + DeFi. Similar to MakerDAO, decentralized lending and fund custody, stablecoins, etc. will be built on the user base of Bitcoin to gain greater scale and visibility with the leading crypto asset.
• BTC + Privacy Protocol. Since Bitcoin assets account for a very high proportion in the entire industry, Bitcoin users’ need for privacy is even more urgent. A smart contract-based privacy protocol can be built in the BSC ecosystem, and Bitcoin users can use this to achieve asset privacy.
• BTC + DApp. Bitcoin users can directly create various DApps in the BSC network, such as decentralized exchanges, decentralized games, and decentralized domain name services. These applications are not mainstream now, but given the huge network effect of Bitcoin, there will be more DApps that can prove their value.

Compatibility with Bitcoin Ecosystem

To provide the huge network effect of Bitcoin, BSC is technically compatible with Bitcoin in terms of the underlying architecture and network parameters:

The infrastructure layer of the BSC adopts the UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) model that is completely consistent with Bitcoin, supports all script types of Bitcoin, and naturally supports SegWit, multi-sig, etc. Compared with the account model, the UTXO model has certain advantages in terms of security, anonymity, and parallelism, and supports SPV (Simple Payment Verification), which makes it easier to support light wallets.

Due to the consistency of the underlying architecture, BSC is naturally compatible with the Bitcoin ecosystem. For example, all types of Bitcoin wallets, browsers, and Layer-2 protocols (such as the Lightning Network) can directly support BSC, and users have no limits.

Also, the upper limit of the total supply of BSC, the inflation rate, and the halving period are all consistent with Bitcoin. BSC will also inherit all the transaction history data of Bitcoin. Bitcoin users will obtain the equivalent BSC 1: 1. All subsequent BSC coins will be generated by PoW mining, and the development team will not have any pre-mining or pre-allocation of any coins.

Compatibility with Smart Contracts

Virtual machines are the execution environment of smart contracts. Based on maintaining the above compatibility with Bitcoin’s underlying infrastructure, BSC has achieved compatibility with EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) by adding additional scripts and intermediate layers, so that it can theoretically support all smart contracts in the Ethereum ecosystem. Popular applications in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as MakerDAO, AZTEC privacy protocol, decentralized stablecoins, etc., can be directly ported to the BSC network. Although these applications have received some attention on Ethereum, restrictions on the Ethereum network has significantly limited their further development. For example, decentralized lending, if you rely on the stability of Bitcoin assets and the participation of Bitcoin users, you will get more room for development.

Mining Algorithm and Reward

BSC uses the PoW consensus mechanism. Unlike Bitcoin, BSC uses the newer SHA-3 + Blake2b mining algorithm. Bitcoin’s computing power is mainly controlled by several large Bitcoin mining pools. If BSC used a PoW mining algorithm the same as Bitcoin or any mining algorithm that already has ASIC miners, there would be a good possibility for the network to suffer 51% attacks during the initial startup. To reduce the risk of attack and keep the network sufficiently decentralized, BSC uses the SHA-3 + Blake2b hash algorithm. This algorithm has been verified in projects such as Handshake, and currently, there is no ASIC miner available, which helps ensure the stable development of the BSC network.

As a BSC miner, in addition to the block rewards and transaction fees like Bitcoin, the block rewards will include the gas cost of smart contracts. Every halving of bitcoin brings significant challenges to miners. When the future bitcoin block reward is reduced to zero, whether transaction fees can support miners’ income is still unknown. The introduction of smart contracts will give BSC miners a source of additional revenue, further encourage miners to participate in mining, and protect the security of the network.

Community Governance

The BSC project is initiated by the developers from its community, and they no economic benefits. Therefore, to show interest, BSC will collect digital signatures from the Bitcoin community on the official website (https://bsc.net/).

After the project was released on Bitcointalk https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5231921.0 , the BSC project gained more and more attention in the Bitcoin community, and the number of signatures collected is steadily increasing, proving that more and more Bitcoin holders have recognized the idea of Bitcoin Smart Contract. From https://bsc.net/:

BitcoinSC (BSC) is a great improvement to the Bitcoin protocol. It integrates the functionality of Smart Contracts into the Bitcoin protocol, giving developers the ability to build decentralized applications on Bitcoin. It would bring about a new Hard Fork, on which Bitcoin holders can use their existing funds directly. BSC will combine the unlimited creative space of Smart Contracts and the vast network effect of Bitcoin, which will be a very meaningful combination and exploration.

Here is BSC’s whitepaper: https://docs.bsc.net/en/bsc_en.pdf

Read more details and sign to show your support at our website https://bsc.net

What separates BSC from others ?

BSC has been designed with flexibility, security and scalability in mind. This will enable BSC to become the de-facto platform for DeFi.

How to sign

1. Go to https://bsc.net and click on “Sign to Support”, you do not need to pay anything, just send a signature from your BTC wallet.
2. Enter your public address and name (or other greeting), and click on send, no funds will be charged by the BSC team, this will only send your signature.

Why should I sign

Signing is requested from the community to show support for BSC, to see community interest in BSC’s improvements to the blockchain protocol.

I’m in! When does it launch?

BSC will launch on June 15 2020

Social Links

Twitter

Telegram

Medium

Bitcointalk

Reddit

Discord

Roadmap