Bitcoin Cash Set To Hard Fork, Again

Bitcoin ABC, a development team behind Bitcoin Cash have announced the full details of the next Bitcoin Cash update (hard fork) set to roll out on the 15th of November 2018. The announcement is so far in advance of the update, as Bitcoin ABC have a responsibility to ensure that people are ready for the update and that none of the technology behind Bitcoin Cash are affected by the roll out.

The update is now live and ready to be downloaded and implemented, but as stated, the update won’t actually go live until November. So in essence, if this affects you, download now and forget about it, the rest will happen in good time, automatically.

According to the official Bitcoin ABC announcement:

“We are pleased to announce that Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0 has been released. You can download it at: https://download.bitcoinabc.org/0.18.0/. The goal of Bitcoin ABC is to help create sound money that is usable by everyone in the world. We believe this is a civilization-changing technology which will dramatically increase human freedom and prosperity. Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0 represents the next step towards this goal. Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0 includes implementation and activation of the Bitcoin Cash network upgrade that will take effect on Nov 15, 2018. All users of Bitcoin ABC should upgrade to version 0.18.0 as soon as possible.”

So what does the update include?

“The specific features included in the November 15th upgrade, and provided by Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0, are:

 

• A new opcode called OP_CHECKDATASIG that improves the BCH scripting language to permit the validation of messages from outside the blockchain. This will enable uses such as the use of oracles and cross-chain atomic contracts.

• The introduction of canonical transaction ordering. This is a technical building block that lays the foundation for massive scaling improvements in the future.

• Several minor technical fixes and improvements.”

 

These updates are carried out to ensure that everyone on the network has access to a fairer and better product, therefore these updates are not simply just to keep developers busy, rather they are designed to address the needs of everyone, from miners to investors and general users of Bitcoin Cash. As cryptocurrency with a huge pro-adoption community, these updates are also designed with adoption in mind, therefore within this, Bitcoin ABC want to make Bitcoin Cash better for the average person to use. According to their official announcement:

“We aim to work in the best interests of miners, investors, and users of Bitcoin Cash, and to collaborate and coordinate with other teams and projects in the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0 grew out of this collaborative process. It implements network upgrade features developed with input and collaboration from many different groups. It is an important step in the process of careful and incremental technical progress to improve the utility of Bitcoin Cash and enable massive on-chain scaling. To become a solid base for application development and innovation, Bitcoin Cash needs to continuously improve and compete. At Bitcoin ABC, we are working diligently building a technical foundation to enable Bitcoin Cash to be the best money the world has ever seen.”

You can see the full update for yourself, here.