9 months out from the split with BTC, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is exploding past the other coins in the cryptosphere. As of 16:00 UTC on May 15th, The Bitcoin Cash blockchain has successfully implemented its network upgrade to become the first SHA-256 chain that can process 250 transactions per second. Bitcoin (BTC), in contrast, can only handle about 7 transactions per second, which means BCH would require 32x more volume than BTC at it’s all time peak to even begin to fill the mempool. That’s almost 14 million transactions per day capable on the BCH chain compared to BTC’s record 425 thousand transactions in one day.
Riding in with the news of the upgrade, nChain, one of the 8 development teams for Bitcoin Cash, has released the Nakasendo developer kit (SDK) at no cost to anybody who wishes to #BUIDL (BCH slang for “BUILD”) upon the Bitcoin Cash blockchain – opening up the doors for developers to more easily integrate their ideas into the blockchain space if they programs for BCH.
But the biggest news of the day is the reopening of Bitcoin’s OP-codes, because they are the basis for the execution of smart contracts!
“The fact that Bitcoin was built on top of a scripting language with a rich instruction set suggests that it was always intended to be a base platform that enabled much more complex rulesets to govern the transfer of funds. Restoring bitcoin to its originally intended design (with bugs fixed) is a reason in itself,” wrote Steve Shadders, a developer from nChain.
Bitcoin ABC, nChain, and also Lokad are directing the evolution within the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem, but there is a ton of room for new developers to join them and the teams from Bitcoin Unlimited, XT, BitPrim and more. Development of the chain is open to all developers because there is neither a hierarchy nor any custodians of the Bitcoin Cash chain. If all of this news wasn’t enough, nChain is already working on the next network upgrade.
“Simply for the sake of continuing the cautious approach. Enabling only a few op codes for the May 15th protocol upgrade not only limits the risk and enables all involved developers to give each op code more attention. By keeping the scope of the change small it gives the BCH developer community a chance to refine the process of enabling such features,” Shadders wrote.
In summary, Bitcoin Cash is open for business! Ethereum has had numerous hacks, attacks, bugs and struggles, and Bitcoin Core has been plagued by the focus of their single development team on developing Lightning Network rather than Bitcoin. As development of the top 3 coins has become increasingly centralized, Bitcoin Cash is focusing on merchant adoption, smart contract integration and inviting in all ideas from all developers!
