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Bitcoin Cash, the usability-focused Bitcoin hard fork, is preparing to perform a blockchain-wide upgrade slated to happen on May 15th. The upgrade implements the adaptive blocksize limit algorithm, allowing the network to adapt to future increases in demand without having direct input from actors, avoiding the opportunity for social attacks.
Bitcoin Cash to Include Adaptative Blocksize Limit Algorithm in May 15th Upgrade
Bitcoin Cash, a usability-focused top 15 cryptocurrency, is preparing to include significant changes to its structure with a network-wide upgrade slated for May 15. After adding Ethereum-like smart contracts last year, this upgrade, nicknamed “Jessica,” seeks to prepare the network for an eventual rise in transaction demand by implementing an adaptive blocksize limit algorithm (ABLA) that allows for rapid congestion responses without external action.
The algorithm corresponds to a proposal made in CHIP-2023-04, which describes the benefits this change brings to the network. ABLA is designed to automate the response of Bitcoin Cash to a sudden rise in block size utilization using the evolution of mined blocks as an input. This means the blockchain will answer automatically to these changes without resorting to manual interactions requiring consensus from network participants.
This brings advantages to the network and protects it from social attacks, delegating the decisions to the algorithm itself. The proposal stresses that “needing to coordinate manual increases to Bitcoin Cash’s blocksize limit incurs a meta cost on all network participants,” opening the door for social attacks derived from disagreements.
Mathieu Geukens, a prominent BCH developer, reinforced the relevance of this upgrade as a social mechanism to avoid infighting, stressing that “a hardcoded limit is a continuous topic of discussion of when to raise it and by how much.”
He declared:
It’s very bullish news that Bitcoin Cash was able to address this issue in a comprehensive way and come to a long-term solution.
Bitcoin Cash developer Jason Dreyzehner noted this upgrade fixes “an economic vulnerability that was introduced in 2010 and led to the BCH/BTC network split in 2017.” Dreyzehner also stated that ABLA solves the artificial blocksize scarcity caused by a hypothetical rise in transactions that take users to use “custodians, intermediaries, and competing networks,” as has happened before with other chains.
While ABLA’s implementation will change nothing shortly, as the current limit is far from being reached with today’s network demand, it signals the commitment of Bitcoin Cash to adapt to future demand increases swiftly. The proposed changes also maintain the current 32 MB as a floor value, maintaining a “stand-by” capacity even when the network is underused.
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