Bitcoin Cash Stress Test Results Spark Centralization Concerns

A recent "Stress test" conducted on the Bitcoin Cash has caused controversy due to the apparently highly centralized nature of the BCH network.

Conducted by anonymous developer "Bitpico," the community-driven stress test purportedly revealed evidence that the Bitcoin Cash network is operating with a significant number of full nodes located on the "Same server rack."

The Bitpico stress test which, according to its creator, combines "Low-level TCP/IP stack attacks to high-level bitcoin cash protocol attacks," was met with skepticism from the cryptocurrency community upon announcement, with many community members dismissing the threats of an attack as laughable.

Bitpico's empty threats did nothing to alter the result of the Segwit2x debate, leading many cryptocurrency community members to ignore the results of the developer's Bitcoin Cash stress test.

The evidence gathered by Bitpico during the test echo similar sentiments expressed by Bitcoin developer Nick Szabo.

Szabo announced concerns regarding the centralization of the Bitcoin Cash network in December 2017, referring to the network as "Centralized sockpuppetry" and retweeting evidence gathered by software architect Sondre Bjellås that 54% of Bitcoin Cash nodes at the time were hosted by Alibaba.

"Bitcoin Cash" is centralized sock puppetry.

Evidence purportedly captured by the Bitpico stress test demonstrated that 98% of all show nodes currently sit on the "Same server rack," which could potentially leave the Bitcoin Cash network highly susceptible to security threats or seizure.

While the Bitpico stress test may claim that 49% of all Bitcoin Cash nodes are operating on Alibaba facilities, conflicting statistics published by BCHNodes show a fairly even spread between the US and China-based nodes.

We are coding a #bcash $bch network crawler because we don't trust some of these websites; you know, don't trust verify.