On the 15th of November 2022, Jason Dreyzahner, announced that the Bitcoin cash (BCH) upgrade is live on the testnet and can now support transactions as small as 65 bytes.
The May 2023 upgrade to Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is now active on the test network! 🎉
Supported at block #121957 (0000000056087dee73fb66178ca70da89dfd0be098b1a63cf6fe93934cd04c78): transactions as small as 65 bytes, P2SH32 for stronger contract security, and CashTokens!
— Jason Dreyzehner (@bitjson) November 15, 2022
Jason advised developers in testnet3 and testnet4 to migrate to the chipnet as that is Bitcoin Cash’s primary test network. This is where upgrades will be activated 6 months ahead of time.
Here’s why the CHIPnet is relevant for Bitcoin cash’s ecosystem development.
The Bitcoin cash network gets upgraded annually on the 15th of May. Since Bitcoin cash is a decentralized project, the upgrades were difficult to control as major developers in the network rushed to provide upgrades that gave them a better standing in the network.
This scattered form of development naturally led to friction and dispute between teams and developers, both during contribution and implementation. All this chaos has led to uncertainty, acceptance problems, and even splits in the network, giving birth to BSC and XEC.
This led to the creation of the Cash Improvement Proposal (CHIP) process.
The intention is to bridge the gap to achieve better collaboration and acceptance between contributors of the network, which will lead to fewer splits and more healthy yet decentralized development.
With that in mind developers who want to contribute to the annual mainnet’s development, must implement their contributions on the Chipnet 6 months before May 15th.
This will give other collaborators on the network adequate time to test the update and provide feedback, either positive or negative. Positive feedback is lodged, and negative feedback would require communication and mediation to resolve the issues and in certain cases, the update is delayed till the next annual cycle.
Each contributor will require overwhelming positive approval among stakeholders that render a decision on the CHIP. And all this, is in time for a monumental move by Saint Kitts and Nevis.
According to the prime minister of the federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Timothy Harris, Bitcoin cash could be a legal tender for their country by March 2023.
Even local businesses in Saint Kitts and Nevis have already started to implement the use of Bitcoin cash in their daily transactions.
