Schnorr Signatures Await Bitcoin Cash as the Next Fork Draws Near

The Bitcoin Cash network is scheduled to fork on May 15 and the community has been steadily preparing for the next upgrade, which will entail the addition of Schnorr signatures and Segwit recovery exemption. Also read: A Look at Openbazaar’s Multi-Currency Wallet and Vendor Listings Bitcoin Cash Upgrade Time: May 15, 2019, Shortly After 12 … Read more

Xthinner Protocol Tested on BCH Mainnet Shows 99% Block Compression

On April 8, BCH developer Jonathan Toomim revealed how far he’s come with the Xthinner block compression protocol. Toomim tested the platform between two Bitcoin ABC full nodes on the BCH main network and a 363 kB block was compressed down to 1,660 bytes, or 99.54% compression. Also read: Uyen T Nguyen: The Powerful Young … Read more

Two BCH Devs Leave Bitcoin Unlimited as Network Upgrade Approaches

On March 15, the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network is set to upgrade, with plans to add two specific elements to the chain: the Segwit recovery exception and enabling Schnorr signatures. With just six weeks left, programmers have been discussing the fork regularly during BCH developer meetings. Meanwhile, two BCH developers have announced their resignation from … Read more

Business Owner’s Seething Critique of the Lightning Network Goes Viral

A business owner who runs a media company in Australia and pays employees remotely in the Philippines has given his honest opinion on what it’s like to use the Lightning Network (LN). Jason Smith’s experience of attempting to use LN for payments was filled with frustration. He reports that the fundamental structure of the offchain … Read more

Drivechain Creator’s Latest Paper Sparks Debate Over Bitcoin’s Future Security

Drivechain developer Paul Sztorc has the cryptocurrency community riled up over his latest blog “Security Budget in the Long Run.” The essay discusses the economics of BTC network fees over a long period of time and suggests rather than giving up the fees to competition, a dominant protocol should collect fees “from all networks.” Also … Read more

RSK Sidechain Is Now Secured by 45% of BTC’s Hashrate

On Feb. 14, the cryptocurrency infrastructure organization led by RSK Labs announced the one-year anniversary of the RSK network and highlighted several notable achievements. Over the last 12 months, the project’s merge mining has managed to gather 45 percent of the Bitcoin Core (BTC) network hashrate, making the RSK smart contract system more secure than … Read more

Privacy and Scaling: Schnorr Signatures Are Coming to Bitcoin Cash

On Tuesday, Jan. 29, Bitcoin Cash developer Mark Lundeberg revealed two planned features for the scheduled May 2019 BCH upgrade. In the gist published to Github, Lundeberg described a specific improvement that’s been discussed by cryptocurrency developers for years — implementing Schnorr signatures in place of ECDSA signatures. This could upgrade the BCH chain to … Read more

Lightning Network Co-Creator Is Designing a Scaling Solution Called Utreexo

A blockchain researcher has been working on a scaling effort for the unspent transaction output set found in the Bitcoin protocol. According to Tadge Dryja’s recently published description of research, the software engineer is working on a dynamic accumulator called Utreexo. The project could theoretically allow network participants to verify the state of the chain’s … Read more

18 Months Away? Latest Lightning Network Study Calls System a ‘Small Central Clique’

The Lightning Network has been touted as the solution to the Bitcoin Core (BTC) network’s scalability problem for years now. Over the last few months, the Lightning Network has shown growth but there are still significant concerns about centralization, routing issues, and creating a usable mainstream-friendly interface. The ongoing joke that the network is “18 … Read more

BCH Developer Unveils Xthinner Scaling Protocol – Claims to Compress Blocks by 99%

On Sunday, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) developer Jonathan Toomim unveiled a project he’s been working on called Xthinner, a new block propagation protocol that leverages the benefits of lexicographic transaction ordering (LTOR). According to Toomim’s data, Xthinner can compress blocks by 99.6 percent and performs roughly 4x to 6x more efficiently than block propagation concepts like … Read more