Bitcoin Cash development is still going strong four months after its last upgrade. That means new features are in the pipeline and future upgrades are on the way. Details of the coin’s next hard fork, which will take place in May, have already been officially announced.
However, new details about the coin’s November hard fork have also emerged. Mark Lundeberg, a prominent Bitcoin Cash developer, has explained his plans for the coin’s winter upgrade. According to Lundeberg, scalability and security features are scheduled for November:
My plans for November 2019 Bitcoin Cash upgrade: get BIP62 rule 3 activated in consensus (it’s the very last third-party malleability mechanism affecting ordinary P2PKH transactions) and allow OP_CHECKMULTISIG to use Schnorr signatures.
— Mark Lundeberg (@MarkLundeberg) March 13, 2019
What Does This Mean?
BIP 62 provides protection against malleability, which occurs when transactions are modified “in flight.” This is not an attack in and of itself, but it is a type of double spend, and it does increase the risk of other attacks. As Lundeberg has noted, this problem has partially been solved already.
Meanwhile, Schnorr signatures improve upon multisig, a feature of many wallets. Multisignature addresses are special addresses that require more than one person to sign off on a transaction. Schnorr signatures allow multisig transactions to be verified more efficiently, and they also conceal how many individuals have signed a transaction.
Avalanche Might Not Be Added
A major addition to Bitcoin Cash’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism is also being discussed. Long wait times and transaction backlogs have discouraged merchants from adopting cryptocurrency. Avalanche, which introduces BFT consensus, could speed up Bitcoin Cash payments by allowing zero-confirmation transactions.
Currently, Bitcoin Cash transactions take about ten minutes. This is reasonably fast, but Avalanche has been shown to finalize transactions in under two seconds—which is even faster than Ethereum. However, this feature might not be implemented in November: Lundeberg suggests Avalanche won’t be ready in time for the upgrade’s cutoff date.
I won’t be working on that directly, but I’ll be keeping an eye on the developments there. I’m not sure they intend to have it running by August (the code freeze).
— Mark Lundeberg (@MarkLundeberg) March 13, 2019
A Non-Contentious Hard Fork
Both of Bitcoin Cash’s upcoming hard forks will probably be far less controversial than last year’s hard fork, which caused a mining faction to split off and create Bitcoin SV. This means that most Bitcoin Cash holders won’t notice a difference during the next upgrade. If all goes well, Bitcoin Cash’s new features will be quietly activated by miners with little controversy.
Various sources have noted that there are now plans in place to keep Bitcoin Cash development unified. The coin’s developers are now holding open livestreams twice a month to prevent conflict from arising. The upcoming May fork appears to be moving along smoothly, and it seems likely that this will hold over into November as well.
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