The Bitcoin Cash team recently announced a new fork that will replace Segwit for a new scalable method capable of making the blocksize adjustable.
On August 20, 2018, Bitcoin Cash announced the release of Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0. With this new implementation, Bitcoin Cash is aiming to create an easy-to-use currency that will be accessible to anyone in the world and will be immune to scalability issues. Some even say that with this new feature, Bitcoin Cash becomes the actual currency Satoshi envisioned.
What is Bitcoin ABC?
Bitcoin ABC is mainly a full node implementation of the Bitcoin Cash protocol which is set to provide stable software that allows development with an open and collaborative process. While Bitcoin ABC makes the proposal, bitcoin cash refers to the digital currency.
The main objective of Bitcoin ABC is to help increase human freedom and prosperity.
While Bitcoin ABC was already released and already be downloaded, it includes the implementation and core activation of the Bitcoin Cash Network upgrade which is supposed to be made on November 15, 2018.
The Bitcoin ABC proposal originated as an alternative proposed by Bitmain against the user activated soft fork (UASF), but Bitmain had a completely different name for this alternative. The alternative to the UASF was basically a method developed by Amaury Séchet. It was in the beginning of this year that Séchet revealed the Adjustable Blocksize Cap proposal to an audience at the Future of Bitcoin conference.
The Upgrade’s Main Goal
The Bitcoin ABC upgrade goal is to provide the chance for investors, miners and Bitcoin Cash users choose the options most suited for them as well to allow cooperation and coordination between different teams within the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem.
Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0 was set to implement network upgrade features developed with help of several different teams having different goals. The cooperation is an important step in the direction of constant technical progress to improve the utility of Bitcoin Cash and enable massive on-chain scaling.
Bitcoin cash feels that it needs continuous improvement that can allow it to become a competitive currency. That is why the team is working tirelessly with Bitcoin ABC, so that it can become the technical foundation to enable Bitcoin Cash to be the most suitable means of exchange in the world.
Salient Features
The specific features included in the Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0 upgrade are:
- The introduction of a new opcode – OP_CHECKDATASIG which allow validation from outside the blockchain, as well as it enables cross-chain atomic contracts.
- The introduction of canonical transaction ordering. This will set the basics for massive scaling improvements.
- The introduction of technical fixes and minor improvements.
On the announcement, the team said that work is still ongoing and that in the coming weeks more information would be revealed as to provide a lot more details on the specific improvements Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0 is about to introduce. The team also advised that all users of Bitcoin ABC should upgrade to version 0.18.0 as soon as they can.
The Bitcoin ABC protocol version can be downloaded here.
