BitMEX launch of ForkMonitor.info, a new website sponsored by BitMEX Research. The website is connected to several different nodes, both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash implementations. It displays various pieces of information regarding the chains followed. This website can be useful for monitoring the situation during network upgrades (softforks or hardforks), as well as being potentially useful in helping to detect unintentional consensus bugs.
The website is primarily geared towards Bitcoin Cash, running 8 Bitcoin Cash nodes compared to 5 Bitcoin nodes. The reason for this is the upcoming Bitcoin Cash hardfork, where several different nodes appear designed to follow different chains.
The forkmonitor.info website may also be useful in monitoring the situation during this upgrade. After the Bitcoin Cash hardfork is complete, the website’s intention is to move some of the focus over to Bitcoin. The plan is to run more versions of Bitcoin Core (especially older versions), as well as independent implementations such as Bcoin, BTCD and Libbitcoin.
This may be helpful in spotting any consensus bugs, such as the inflation bug CVE-2018-17144, which was discovered in September 2018. The website’s code will be made open source, which may hopefully encourage other organisations to spin up multiple nodes and monitor the chains in a similar way.
