Bitcoin Cash Fans Start ‘Torch Passing’ Ceremony With a Non-Divisible Token

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) supporters have been passing around a different kind of ‘LN Trust Chain’ across forums and social media. The social experiment for passing digital value has taken a different path to the Lightning Torch because people can share the non-divisible SLP Torch onchain for fractions of a penny.

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The One and Only Non-Divisible SLP Torch Begins a Passing Ceremony

Over the last few weeks, Lightning Network (LN) supporters have been participating in a social experiment called the Lightning Torch. This entails sharing a small fraction of BTC in a similar fashion to the Olympic torch passing. A few weeks into the LN experiment, a BCH fan called ‘Cipher Gnome’ created a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) version of the torch on the Simple Ledger Protocol. After the torch creation on March 6, Cipher Gnome declared that there is only one SLP Torch and the token cannot be divided. Since then, just like the LN experiment, BCH fans have been having fun sharing the scarce token on Reddit and Twitter.

The SLP Torch has passed through the hands of people like developer Josh Ellithorpe, Don Wonton, Collin Enstad, Imaginary Username, Souper Nerd, and Bitcoin.com’s CEO Roger Ver. After Ver had the torch, he decided to pass it to Paul Lambert because Lambert had a hard time trying to receive the Lightning Torch due to complications. “The SLP Torch has been passed on to the person who previously tried to use LN to receive the LN Trust Chain, but failed because it was “years away” from being ready for actual reliable use,” explained Ver.

As Far as Trust Is Concerned, the SLP Torch Is Quite Different to the LN Trust Chain

Lambert is the brother of Spencer Lambert, the owner of the BCH chickens, the famous poultry that get fed mealworms from people paying a BCH-powered machine that dispenses the food. The next day, Spencer then passed the SLP Torch to a girl named Laura over Twitter. BCH fans can watch the SLP Torch being passed with a special website hosted on Github specifically designed to follow the unique token change hands.

Note about #SLPTorch : Unlike coinrolls and LN torches, it’s nonfungible with only one in existence. Can’t press Continue if you fuck up, no insert coin to fight the same boss twice.

Every forward is thus more exciting than “torches” that can be reincarnated on the spot.

— imaginary_username (@im_uname) March 10, 2019

Of course, a few LN supporters didn’t like the idea of the SLP Torch, so someone decided to fork an LN version and some users have been passing it to others on Twitter. However, BCH enthusiasts explained on social media that the SLP Torch is quite different to the LN Trust Chain experiment because in many respects it is considered far more trustless. Well-known BCH proponent Collin Enstad noted the differences between the two experiments, stating:

Some things to note: [SLP Torch] passing is done with a non-custodial Badger wallet. There are no long invoices that can time out and I didn’t have to run a node. I didn’t have to have an equal amount of the “torch” in a channel to receive the SLP Torch. It was also sent in an onchain BCH transaction for a fraction of a penny.

Overall the Bitcoin Cash community seems to like the idea of the SLP Torch and the Simple Ledger Protocol in general. Over the last few weeks, individuals and organizations have been creating a ton of SLP tokens using the BCH chain and sharing them across the web. The SLP Torch created by Cipher Gnome is quite unique because it cannot be duplicated and divided and when the SLP Torch experiment comes to an end, someone will hold a piece of history.

What do you think about the SLP Torch? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Bitcoin.com Block Explorer, Pixabay, SLP Torch Explorer, and Twitter.

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Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.