Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a fork of Bitcoin that supports larger blocks and different opcodes. It is incompatible with the main Bitcoin blockchain and has been diverging from the Bitcoin codebase. On May 15th there was a network upgrade that created a situation where BCH is not compatible with some software that was previously compatible. More specifically, the new version of the bitcoin-abc node software that we use for the infrastructure that powers Jaxx became incompatible and our system is now unable to display new transactions from the Bitcoin Cash network.
The network upgrade for BCH occurred at block #530361. The day after the upgrade we held our “United by Decentral” event for our partners and friends in New York as the official after-party to Consensus Blockchain Summit. At the event, we announced that on July 1st we will be releasing a new version of Jaxx that we have been developing since the Fall. We’re calling the new version “Jaxx Liberty” and we look forward to getting into the hands of our users as quickly as possible. Although our engineers originally thought that the May 15th change would be a minor upgrade, it has turned to be a bigger challenge than expected. We are working diligently to fix it.
The challenge we face is due to the way that Jaxx interacts with blockchains, as opposed to how a user interacts with their own node, with their own wallet on that node. The Jaxx backend infrastructure uses a combination of official daemons and various blockchain indexers, including a proprietary system used for most coins and the Bitpay Insight API service for Bitcoin Cash. We need these indexers to take the data from the official blockchain client and push it into a large database that can be easily accessed by other programs that ultimately serve the data to Jaxx users.
The new version of BCH is not compatible with the Bitpay Insight system that we use for BCH, and new versions have other compatibility issues, so this has required us to investigate a few different approaches: upgrading to the newer beta of Insight, moving to ElectrumX (or another open-source server), moving to a new proprietary system for Bitcoin Cash and adapting our existing proprietary system to BCH. At the moment we don’t have an expected time for delivering this upgrade but we hope it will be within the next week and that we’re able to migrate to a newer version of Insight.
We are working hard to fix this situation so that we can deliver on the promise of Jaxx: a unified blockchain interface for digital assets. We’ve diverted about 20 percent of our development team to work on the BCH issue. In the meantime, your private keys remain safe in Jaxx and once our backend infrastructure is made compatible again with the Bitcoin Cash network you will be able to send and receive BCH again. If you need to transact with BCH immediately you can always export your private keys or mnemonic (found in the MENU > Tools > Backup Wallet > View Backup Phrase) and then import them into another wallet program such as bitcoin-abc. A long-standing tenet of Jaxx has been that your private keys belong to you and we will never lock our users into our platform.
Like many companies in our space, we’re dealing with unexpected challenges, an evolving technical landscape and ever greater demands on our infrastructure. We continue to hire more people to help out with Jaxx development and if you think you’re one of those people we would appreciate you reaching out to careers@decentral.ca. We know that we need more people to help deal with the many chains (including Bitcoin Cash) and many tokens in Jaxx, and our ambitious plans for Jaxx Liberty.
Please accept my apologies on behalf of the Jaxx team at Decentral Inc. We’re working hard to bring BCH back online as well as to meet our timeline to bring you Jaxx Liberty on July 1st.
Sincerely,
Addison Cameron-Huff
President, Decentral