Can Bitcoin Cash BCH's May upgrade bring about another surge?

Ethereum's hard Constantinople fork upgrade has just passed. In May of this year, Bitcoin Cash, which has driven out CSW with overwhelming computing power, will also usher in a new round of forks. Looking at the development history of Bitcoin Cash, so far, each fork upgrade has been accompanied by a large price increase. According to historical expectations, the price will most likely rise before the upgrade in May.

In May 2018, BCH hard forked, the block size increased to 32MB, and the tokenization function was added. The price fluctuation in that month was as high as 42%.

In November 2018, due to the computing power war, BCH hard forked into a new currency BSV. The price fluctuation in that month reached as high as 69%.

Behind the price fluctuations, the market voted with its feet and chose BCH, which may imply recognition of BCH's development concept and spiritual culture. Therefore, the upgrade in May has become particularly anticipated.

1. Pioneer upgrade: Schnorr signature, BCH surpasses BTC in signature technology

According to the announcement of the BCH development team, version 0.19.0 is now available on the official website, and the upgrade is expected to be officially activated on May 15, 2019. This upgrade has two key points: enabling Schnorr signatures and allowing isolated witness recovery.

"Signature" is an anti-counterfeiting string that verifies the private key and public key in a transaction. Currently, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin both use ECDSA signatures (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm). Schnorr signature is a digital signature strategy invented by computer scientist Claus Schnorr. Many cryptography experts believe that Schnorr is the best technology for signature-related applications because it has high accuracy, no scalability issues, and fast verification speed.

One of Schnorr's advantages is that multiple signatures are aggregated, saving storage bandwidth resources. Traditional Bitcoin transactions contain a lot of data, and Schnorr can simplify the process by creating a single aggregate signature. If a large number of Bitcoin signatures are converted into an aggregate signature, Schnorr's solution can save at least 25% of the storage and bandwidth required for the blockchain. In the case of limited resources, it is equivalent to increasing the block capacity.

In addition, the combination of Schnorr signatures with different protocols helps protect privacy and improve security. Developer Lundeberg explained that Schnorr signatures can achieve very simple multi-party aggregation. Multiple parties can jointly produce an aggregated signature. Transaction applications from different users are placed in one transaction and transmitted to different recipients through output. Schnorr signatures are highly secure and cannot be tampered with by others in the case of aggregation unless all signatories recreate the signature.

It is said that Satoshi Nakamoto considered using Schnorr signature as early as the creation of Bitcoin, but at that time, he chose the more popular ECDSA algorithm to avoid the risk of patent use. In other words, compared with ECDSA signature, Schnorr signature was a more ideal signature algorithm from the beginning, but it was not adopted due to patents and popularity. It can be said that the upgrade and application of Schnorr signature has made BCH ahead of BTC in signature technology and become a pioneer in the encryption market.

2. Compromise upgrade: allowing segregated witness recovery

In the last BCH upgrade, coins that were accidentally sent to the Segregated Witness P2SH address will be unusable due to the CLEANSTACK rules. This upgrade will exempt these coins and restore the coins in the Segregated Witness to their old usable state. According to the BCH official announcement, this means that once the pre-image of the P2SH redemption script is displayed (such as by spending from the corresponding BTC address), any miner can take these coins.

▲Image source: CRIPTO ACTIVOS

This upgrade change is equivalent to restoring the rules to the state before the upgrade in November 2018. If the CLEANSTACK rule is not exempted, these coins cannot be used. Allowing the recovery of isolated witness is a compromise after functional exploration.

3. Bitcoin Cash gradually emerges from the shadow of the hash rate war

Whether it is the upgrade plan announced by developers or the progress of Bitcoin Cash applications, it shows that Bitcoin Cash has gradually emerged from the shadow of the computing power war.

In November 2018, CSW and the forces behind him, who had been planning for a long time, spread the word that they would compete in computing power, launch a computing power war, and seize control of BCH. The entire crypto world seemed to be in danger, and many people in the BCH community were forced to take sides. Just when everyone thought that the computing power war would be a life-and-death battle, CSW broke his promise of "no forked coins" and started a new BSV, which eventually led to the fork of BCH.

Who won this hashrate war? CSW, who claimed to seize control of BCH, failed to fulfill his wish and went the other way; the BCH community was forced to take sides and suffered losses; the market was also turbulent and a new pattern emerged. In general, there was no winner in the hashrate war, but it hit many people's confidence in BCH. Now, after several months of market sentiment adjustment, the price of BCH is more than twice that of BSV, indicating that the market's confidence in BCH is returning and the consensus of the BCH community is constantly consolidating.

From November last year to now, in the past few months, more scenarios support the use of BCH as a means of payment, and BCH's underlying application protocol has been more widely adopted. At the same time, BCH's development progress has not fallen behind, and the Avalance pre-consensus algorithm and Flowee full-node program have appeared.

Payment

More and more payment tools support BCH: Bitpay, Coinbase Commerce, Anypay…

Wikipedia can support BCH donations through BitPay;

NBA title favorites Houston Rockets support BCH donations;

application

The SLP protocol, a token solution based on BCH, has achieved remarkable results and launched the Torch Movement;

Taskopus, a crowdsourcing platform based on BCH, will be launched soon. The platform only supports BCH settlement;

Development

Avalanche pre-consensus algorithm greatly shortens transaction time, even to just 2-3 seconds;

The "Flowee" full node program shortens the block download time and can synchronize 10 years of Bitcoin data in just 3 hours;

BCH full node developers launched the privacy protection wallet Neutrino, which is based on simplified payment verification (SPV) technology and has enhanced privacy protection functions.

4. BCH application scenarios continue to increase, and development progress is significant

In the bear market, the BCH community is a rare team that is actually promoting more BCH scenarios and applications. During the low tide of the market, the BCH community and developers did not fall into despair due to the impact of the computing war, but gradually let the world accept BCH through more landing scenarios, and made BCH more convenient in payment and application through effective development. This is the true believer in the crypto world, who does not stop moving forward because of a temporary blow, but strives to create greater value in times of difficulty.

Compared with the conservative BTC community, the BCH community boldly applies large blocks and plans Schnorr signatures, and the community development concept seems avant-garde and close to reality. A strong community means a strong public chain, and the future development of BCH is worth looking forward to.

Author: Little Ant Source: Gyro Finance