The largest block size increase in Bitcoin Blockchain history has arrived!

Bitcoin Cash and it's network has successfully performed an upgrade on the 15th of May, approximately at 1:54 EDT.

BCH proponents are pretty excited for the upgrade, to say the least, as the 32MB block size increase will be the largest block size expansion of its kind within the cryptocurrency landscape. The increase will allow developers to maintain consistent transaction throughputs for the billions of people living in the world, alongside on-chain fees anyone from any developing nation can afford. Using today’s statistics BTC is more than 10.73X more expensive to transact with than BCH. Next month’s bitcoin cash 32MB block size increase will allow enough room for transactions for years to come. LINK

This upgrade is interesting for two reasons...

First reason: Increase in blocksize - increased onchain capacity.

As per the Bitcoin.com article states there is now more on chain capacity. The reason why on chain capacity is important is because if many users adopt they won't have short term capacity issues.

With the current state of Bitcoin legacy chain(BTC) we have a situation that a large number of concurrent transactions would cause transaction backlogs and terrible user experience. With Bitcoin (BTC) this means that we have an architecture that fails if even just a small group of new users start to seriously adopt the technology. Bitcoin cash (BCH) will now be able to handle approx 100 transactions per second, as opposed to just 3 transactions on the legacy Bitcoin chain (BTC).

Bitcoin Cash is the leading contender for on chain scaling with classic SHA256 Proof of Work.

Second reason: re-enabling of op-codes - more advanced systems within blockchain

The second reason is op-codes. They are the basic building blocks of the Bitcoin language. Some of the op-codes were deemed too dangerous for the protocol and were disabled early this decade.

The hardfork will bring the reenabling of some of the opcodes that were disabled before. This will allow developers to add more intricate and advanced systems built on and within Bitcoin Cash's Blockchain.

Hardfork Specification

Version 1.1, 2018-04-09

Summary:

The wait is over as the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network has upgraded its base block size from 8MB to 32MB. The implementation of the new consensus rules went into effect at block height 530356, and so far the transition has been smooth as the community awaits the next concession of blocks. LINK

Any person who is running a full BCH node has already performed an upgrade to their Bitcoin ABC clients to version 0.17.1.

Only three of the changes are notable:

• Increased default data-carrier-size to 220 bytes

• Blocksize increase to 32,000,000 bytes

• Re-enabling of several opcodes

Which Op-Codes Will Be Re-Enabled?

According to this Github page, the above pictures are the 9 opcodes which will be enabled.

It is unclear what new technologies will be built now that more functions are available inside the Bitcoin virtual machine.

What is for certain is that the Bitcoin Cash Blockchain will have more advanced possibilities than Bitcoin Core's (BTC) Blockchain.

Op-Codes Have Been Discussed For Some Time

Op-code redeployment has been a topic of discussion for Bitcoin Core's (and Cash's) development team for quite some time.

The reason why the codes are actually being implemented has been traced back to when Bitcoin Unlimited's Andrew Stone created the "Op-Group" meetings on Github.

The Bitcoin Cash developers who participated in the meetings go as follows:

• Amaury Sechét of Bitcoin ABC

• Dan Connolly of bitcoin.j.cash

• Steve Shadders of Nchain

The summary of the meetings on Github concluded that the the op-codes would need to be seen in use with smart contracts.

However, the original issues associated with these opcodes remain valid — Namely, undefined behavior, and potential for DDoS attacks against the network. LINK

I Am Excited To See Bitcoin Cash's Developments After This Fork!

Bitcoin cash proponents seem ready for the pending upgrade, as last year the community completed a successful revised Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) change, alongside a Base32 address serialization. LINK

The 32MB upgrade along with the re-enabling of the Satoshi Op_Codes are done. BCH users will also have more upgrades to look forward to.

What do you think about the upcoming Bitcoin Cash upgrade slated for May 15? Let us know in the comments below.

I wonder when confidential transactions will be added to Bitcoin Cash?

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Sources for images (that are not mine) are provided by clicking on the image itself.

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