In November 2018, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) underwent a hard fork originally intended for a routine upgrade. However, because the community's disagreements over technical direction and governance philosophy continued to widen, this upgrade ultimately evolved into a "hash war" centered on hash power, chain name, and token symbol. The two opposing sides were the ABC camp, represented by Bitcoin ABC, and the Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) camp, supported by Craig Wright, Calvin Ayre, and others.
The disagreement first manifested in protocol design. The ABC camp advocated introducing canonical transaction ordering (CTOR) and adjusting the difficulty algorithm to improve network performance and block production stability; the SV camp opposed CTOR, emphasized restoring opcodes closer to Satoshi Nakamoto's original design, and advocated continuing to expand block capacity while maintaining protocol stability. On the surface it was a dispute over parameters, but in essence it was a dispute over the direction of "who should define BCH."
As the fork approached, miners on both sides began directing hash power toward the chains they supported, and the hash war rapidly escalated. Hash power was not only a manifestation of block production capability but was also regarded as a voting tool in the contest for the name of "the legitimate BCH." Supporters of ABC included ecosystem participants such as Roger Ver; the SV camp relied on the resources of Craig Wright, Calvin Ayre, and their affiliated mining pools. Both sides simultaneously competed for discursive power on exchanges, wallets, mining pools, and community opinion platforms.
The hard fork ultimately led to a split in the BCH chain: the chain supported by ABC and the chain supported by SV each continued. Exchanges were forced to adopt different naming conventions and trading pairs to distinguish the assets, for example marking them with symbols such as BCHABC/BCHSV or BAB/BSV. Replay protection, wallet compatibility, and miner switching costs also imposed additional friction on ordinary users and infrastructure service providers.
From the results, the hash war did not produce a single "technical winner." The ABC chain continued the BCH brand and liquidity across most exchanges and infrastructure, while SV became independent as BSV and continued to develop. What truly determined the outcome was not only instantaneous hash power but also exchange support, wallet integration, developer ecosystem, and user perception. For the industry, this conflict exposed the difficulty of decentralized governance: when the community cannot reach consensus, a hard fork becomes an exit mechanism, but it also brings the costs of chain splitting and brand dilution.
Looking back at the showdown between BCH ABC and BCH SV, it was more like a stress test of protocol governance and miner power. Hash power can create pressure, but it cannot alone determine "legitimacy"; the acceptance of the market and infrastructure ultimately shaped the post-fork landscape.
