Preparing For The BIP 148 Bitcoin Fork – How To Protect Your Digital Assets
BIP stands for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal. On August 1st of this year Bitcoin will experience a BIP called a user activated soft fork (UASF).
The fork attempts to do 2 main things. It will implement SegWit and patch a security vulnerability on the Bitcoin Core software known as CVE-2017-9230.
The implementation of SegWit is a big deal and very political in the Bitcoin space. Many are for it and many are against it. Basically SegWit believes the solution is to the Bitcoin scaling challenge is to change how blocks are stored. It will creates smaller blocks more often. More details on SegWit.
Hard Fork vs Soft Fork
Both hard forks and soft forks both describe ways to update the Bitcoin core wallet software.
A hard fork is a permanent divergence in the blockchain, while a soft fork is a temporary divergence . BIP 148 is technically a soft fork.
Trace Mayer & Jeff Berwick Discuss The BIP:
How Should You Prepare?
You should prepare for BIP 148 by creating and storing your own private keys. It is also suggested to perform your own network consensus by running a full-node.
This means you should move or make sure your Bitcoin is in a wallet that A. gives your total control of your keys and B. supports the BIP 148.
Here is a list of wallets that support the upcoming Bitcoin improvement proposal:
- 09 Apr 2017 – Electrum
- 09 Apr 2017 – Samourai Wallet
- 11 Apr 2017 – Coinkite
- 12 Apr 2017 – Coinomi
- 22 May 2017 – GreenAddress
- 24 May 2017 – Ledger Wallet
- 27 May 2017 – Mycelium
- 28 May 2017 – Electrum
- 29 May 2017 – Airbitz
- 09 Jun 2017 – Bitgo
What About Exodus?
Exodus is one of our prefered wallets at BitcoinShirtz. They have yet to fully support the BIP but Exodus users retain full control of private keys, so they should be good to go.
Exodus is designed to allow you to control your own wealth. With this control comes the ability to make decisions for yourself and also have 100% control over your funds – this includes Bitcoin and all assets.
Exodus gives the power to you as a user to decide how you want to proceed in the case of a fork. No matter the decision of Exodus, the software is designed to give you the user total ownership and full autonomy over all assets.
Unlike an exchange or hosted wallet, Exodus gives you the user full control of your private keys. With these private keys you will be able to retain control of both sets of coins when and if a fork takes place.
Since Exodus is a light-wallet that depends upon information from other services like ShapeShift, BlockCypher, and Bitpay Insight Exodus is dependent upon their decisions. Until we know the position of each service, we are unable to give a firm position.
Again, we want to stress, the power of Exodus is it gives you the user 100% control over all assets. No matter what Exodus as a company decides to do in a fork situation you always have and maintain full control and management of your assets.
Last updated: Tuesday, May 30th, 2017
Read more about the BIP 148 and UASF on uasfguide.com