The Bitcoin Cash Podcast wholeheartedly supports the November lock-in and May implementation of:
- CHIP-2021-01 Restrict Transaction Version
- CHIP-2021-01 Minimum Transaction Size
- CHIP-2022-02 CashTokens
- CHIP-2022-05 P2SH32 See: https://gitlab.com/0353F40E/p2sh32/-/blob/f58ecf835f58555c9087c53af25da92a0e74534c/CHIP-2022-05_Pay-to-Script-Hash-32_(P2SH32)_for_Bitcoin_Cash.md
I have reviewed the CHIP documents in some detail. A full breakdown and discussion will be done on an upcoming episode of the show, perhaps after the St Kitts conference.
BCH has several areas it is underperforming competing cryptocurrency projects, but its protocol level development is not one of them. There is industry leading thought, care, discussion and engineering skill being carefully added to Bitcoin Cash.
This bodes very well for the next few years. Momentum is a hard thing to capture but an overwhelmingly powerful force once attained, and momentum in Bitcoin Cash is building. Important technical improvements smoothly implemented at the protocol layer are the foundation of that progress and should bring much excitement to the BCH community for the resulting user-facing apps and innovations they will undoubtedly facilitate. In some cases, changes reduce technical debt or improve security and, though invisible to end users, are essential to the continued resilience and effective development of the blockchain.
In addition, the high quality of CHIPs is matched in the quality of the CHIP process itself. Creating decentralised agreement is very difficult, but BCH has earned an effective methodology through many hard-won lessons. The CHIP process is accruing a proven track record and trust by the community over time. In the past, and possibly in the future, BCH has become clouded and delayed by unconstructive arguments, chain splits, recriminations and turmoil. I think it's worth taking a moment to reflect on the absence of such division this year, and to commit internally to helping that continue for next year.
I am very pleased to contribute to the smooth running of the CHIP process via my stakeholder statement in this blog post. I encourage all readers as active members of the BCH community to make their own statements or begin discussions around these CHIPs, to amplify the strength of the consensus forming process.
Much gratitude to CHIP authors bitcoincashautist, Jason Dreyzehner, Tom Zander and Jonathan Silverblood along with everyone else involved in supporting or contributing to the debate, concepting or code for these improvements.
To a smooth May 2023 upgrade!
Jeremy