BCH protocol upgrade countdown: More than 68% of BCH full nodes have supported the upgrade

Source: BitcoinCash

After 12:00 PM on November 15, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will perform a network upgrade to the new rules protocol. After locking in the upgrade, the next block will enforce MINIMALDATA in the script, and the opcodes OP_Checkmultisig and OP_Checkmultisigverify will be upgraded to accept Schnorr signatures.

Code Delivery

This Friday, Bitcoin Cash will carry out a semi-annual protocol upgrade as planned, adding two new features. Developers have been discussing this protocol upgrade for several months, and developers have also explained in detail these new features and how the changes apply to the BCH roadmap in the meeting. In fact, since August 1, 2017, BCH developers have developed a large number of BCH-unique protocol features.

For example, BCH previously raised the block limit to 32MB, which means that BCH has a transaction throughput capacity far exceeding 1MB. In September 2018, BCH processed millions of transactions in one day, far exceeding BTC's daily transaction limit, setting a record for digital currency transaction volume; for another example, Bitcoin Cash developers have re-enabled the previously disabled Satoshi opcode, which can support various transactions, compilers, and other functions. The added opcode OP_Checkdatasig can be used to calculate the computing power of the block, and the signature can be verified in an automatic way; Bitcoin Cash developers have also increased the default data carrier size of the BCH network to 220 bytes. In short, this is a Bitcoin Cash with more functions and stronger transaction capabilities.

Of course, the BCH development process is far more than that, and developers are planning a more ambitious blueprint. At block height 582680, the basic Schnorr signature protocol was added, and the canonical transaction order (also known as CTOR) was implemented in the upgrade before the Schnorr function. According to Coin Dance statistics, BCH developers have added 20 different new explicit functions to the protocol, another 20 are under development, 15 functions are under discussion, and two new functions have yet to be activated.

New explicit features

The first function of this upgrade is to eliminate the ductility vector on the BCH network through the Minimaldata rule. The upgrade announcement on November 15 explained: "This eliminates the final BIP 62 ductility vector, which means that most transactions on the Bitcoin Cash network (including all P2PKH transactions) will not be extendable in the future." This can effectively protect the security of transactions.

There are many forms of malleability vectors in scriptSig and signatures, and BIP62 was introduced in 2014 to address these issues. In the past few years, many types of solutions have been tried to deal with third-party malleability vectors. After the BCH network upgrade next Friday, most Bitcoin Cash transactions will be non-malleable, and the Minimaldata rule implemented can also strengthen simplified payment verification (SPV) clients.

The second feature added by BCH is support for OP_Checkmultisig and OP_Checkmultisigverify to improve the Schnorr signature function added last time. The upgrade announcement reads:

“This upgrade adds support for OP_Checkmultisig, and after the upgrade, all signature checking operations will support Schnorr signatures.”

This means that through Schnorr signatures, the BCH network will allow more complex mechanisms for multi-signature transactions. The upgrade announcement on November 15 stated:

Schnorr aggregate signatures (using OP_Checksig) are one way to do multi-signatures, but they have different technical characteristics than Bitcoin’s traditional multi-signatures and are far from being a replacement for it.

BCH Upgrade Countdown

Bitcoin Cash users and enthusiasts welcome this BCH upgrade, and BCH network participants (developers, miners, wallet providers) have been preparing for these changes. Ordinary users do not need to do anything before the BCH network upgrade function changes take effect. However, miners and node operators need to download and run the latest version of the BCH client that supports November 15.

BCH development teams, Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, BCHD, Flowee, and Bitcoin Verde are all ready for the protocol upgrade, and currently, more than 68% of all publicly accessible BCH full nodes support the upgrade. Enthusiasts and fans who do not run full nodes can use data sites such as Coin Dance or Fork Monitor to query the upgrade information online. Before November 15, these two sites will announce the effective date of the protocol upgrade in advance.