This week, Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) lead developer Andrew Stone released a 42-page OP_Group tokenization proposal. Let’s just call it a Group. He proposed adding an opcode to the Bitcoin Cash scripting language to enable the function of dye coins. But unlike tokenization protocols like Omni or Counterparty, the Group protocol requires a change to the BCH protocol code, and miners need to verify the dye coins in the general transaction confirmation.

Andrew Stone of BU publishes a Group proposal

This week news.Bitcoin.com reported on the upcoming BCH network upgrade in November. The Bitcoin ABC development team has announced its current timeline and goals, such as building and polishing the software code for version 0.18, which will be released on October 15th. The developers did not specify what features would be added in the update.

A few days later, Andrew Stone of BU published a proposal for OP_Group, which, if implemented, would add a number of features, such as tokens. Although there is no general consensus on this Group scheme, other dye coin schemes have been proposed by other developers, and some developers believe that OP_Group may be risky.

Group can extend BCH’s scripting language to add a host of features Andrew Stone, lead developer of BU, believes the community should listen and participate in the dye Coin discussion. He released the 42-page document along with a video discussion of the BCH Token Working Group. Panelists include Stone, Andrea Suisani, Bitcoin.com developer Emil Oldenburg, Bitcoin ABC lead developer Amaury Sechet, Shammah Chancellor, Jason Cox, Nchain’s Steve Shadders, Daniel Connolly, and Electron Cash developer Jonald Fyookball.

“This evolved from the basis of the OP_Group scheme. It was no longer an opcode, so I changed the name.” “The document is a bit long, but it’s meant to show a road map for extending the BCH scripting language and adding cool features while keeping bitcoin scripting valid,” Stone explained. For example, I ended by showing how to use OP_Datasigverify to make bets and then tokenize the results of the bets to create prediction markets.

I strongly encourage you to listen to this discussion, even if you are not interested in tokens, because it is clear that there is a difference in philosophy that is likely to affect THE development of BCH for years to come.

Some developers disagree with OP_Group because they believe tokenization can be achieved without changing the BCH consensus protocol

Basically, bitcoin Cash supporters who disagree with the Group approach prefer that BCH can be tokenized without changing the codebase. Others think it’s safer to use technology like the side chain. They also discussed another solution Tokeda, a token-driven metadata protocol developed by Joannes Vermorel. Vermorel noted that the 31-page plan, which is also a draft, was last updated on March 30, 2018, and is not yet complete. “Tokeda addresses the twin challenges of preserving vast amounts of metadata without compromising bitcoin itself, and combining those two issues with corresponding economic incentives to introduce tokens into Bitcoin.”

TOKEDA is compatible with stateless wallets (including SPV wallets) and does not require consensus changes. As a token scheme, TOKEDA relies on an issuer centric, “trust but verify” security model. Vermorel believes the BCH community needs to learn from The lessons of Ethereum to make tokenization easier when dealing with capacity expansion.

“It is now clear that tokenization does not require a change in protocol code, and whether Tokeda or something else is preferred depends on the market.” “If ethereum has learned anything, it’s that it violates the principle of locality and stifles scalability in the design process,” Vermorel said.

Other developers have shared their views on stone Group and Vermorel Tokeda. After Stone published the document, Jonald Fyookbal published an article, “Some Thoughts on tokenization of BCH networks,” expressing his views.

“Whether we should change the AGREEMENT of BCH to add Group is a matter of gain and loss, and also a matter of opinion.” “Part of the reason ERC20 is so successful is that it’s so easy to use and anyone can issue money, so it’s supported by the whole ecosystem. The BCH protocol has been used to implement dye coins but no one uses them because there is no ecological support.”

Regardless, I believe BCH would greatly benefit from finding a common way to implement SPV-friendly, permissionless tokenization.