When the decentralized exchange (DEX) dropped its support for Bitcoin cash after the Bitcoin blockchain split last year, there was a mild outrage on Reddit, and BCH users offered a bounty for anyone who could fork the Bisq protocol to use it for BCH. A university student by the name Emilio Gonzalez has said that he is working on it and they could have their own DEX soon and that ‘Bisq-cash’ works.
This news has come as a relief because the Bisq DEX was an efficient exchange for BTC and losing it made the BCH users without any better options. Bisq uses multi-signature escrow system to execute settlement without the need of a third party. It came to prominence because centralized exchanges keep mishandling things and lose millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies.
So, naturally, it was a blow to the community when it announced that it no longer hosted BCH on its protocol which led to this whole scenario. Initially, two Redditors offered the bounty, but as people joined in and chipped the donations, it has now come to a whopping $5000 in Bitcoin cash. Now, that is a lot of money. Emilio had notified in the earliest that he had begun to fork the protocol.
He says that he has used the Java implementation of the Bitcoin cash protocol called Bitcoincashj, developed by the anonymous developer Pokkst. He also said that the work on it is slow because he has school to attend and exams around the corner. Pokkst, the anonymous developer has shown his support for Emilio by commenting that he is happy that his implementation is being used by someone to make things easier, he also offered to help Emilio with the forking while he takes his exams.
The BTC users on Reddit have been celebrating after Emilio’s announcement and some of them have tipped him in Bitcoin cash after he updated that the work is in progress. Many people also suggested that he integrate the Cashshuffle into the DEX too as it would add an extra layer of security for the transactions. Cashshuffle which secures your transactions by shuffling the tokens just supports the Electron Cash as of now.
The original benefactor of this project, the one who offered the bounty in the first place has asked Emilio to change the name and proposed that a thread dedicated to suggesting names could be created and Bitcoin cash users could all send in their suggestions. Bisq’s original developer has suggested the same and said that a different name would help users by not confusing between the two DEXs.