Bitcoin ABC Developers Unveil Mid-Term Roadmap

Bitcoin ABC has quickly become the go-to client for Bitcoin Cash users. It is a very versatile project, and its developers recently unveiled their mid-term development plans. Things are looking pretty good for users of this client, as a few big changes are on the horizon. Advancing Bitcoin Cash will be a big challenge, but the roadmap seems to check a lot of the right boxes. Whether or not all these updates will actually be implemented within 12 months remains to be seen.

Big Changes are Coming to Bitcoin ABC

One thing about Bitcoin ABC that is nothing but commendable is how its developers are willing to collaborate with other project developers. More specifically, the team is in touch with teams from nChain, Parity, Bitcoin XT, and a handful of other projects. All of this helps when it comes to creating more versatile solutions to support the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. Not surprisingly, all of those projects share a similar vision for BCH and how this ecosystem must evolve in the coming months.

While Bitcoin Cash has made a pretty solid impact over the past few weeks, no one can afford to stand still and rest on their laurels. This is especially true in the world of cryptocurrency, where things evolve at an accelerated pace and community members will gladly share their thoughts and ideas. It is impossible to please everyone, but it seems the upcoming changes will be appreciated by and large. Making Bitcoin Cash more reliable, improving scalability, and reducing fees are some of the top priorities right now.

That is all much easier said than done, but the Bitcoin ABC team has unveiled some of its plans to do so. The next protocol upgrade will occur on May 15th, 2018, and a second major upgrade will happen around November 15th, 2018. It is a bit unclear how many updates can be crammed into the first protocol upgrade. The code will need to be finalized, and the included features will be announced well in advance. So far, a total of four features are planned, but they might not all make it into the first upgrade.

The first feature to look forward to involves increasing the default block size limit. In fact, the Bitcoin ABC team hopes to one day introduce an adaptive block size limit as well. That is an interesting feature to look forward to, as it could help improve on-chain scalability for Bitcoin Cash. It is a bit unclear what block size we are talking about right now, but more information is expected to be released in the next few weeks. There will also be an improved difficulty adjustment algorithm. That is a bit surprising, as the current algorithm was only introduced a few weeks ago.

Furthermore, the Bitcoin ABC team is working on introducing canonical transaction order. Depending on whether or not this feature can be included in the next protocol upgrade, there may even be a complete removal of the transaction ordering consensus as a whole. It will be interesting to see how this affects the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem as a whole. Rest assured there will be some interesting developments in the world of BCH over the next few months.

As one would expect, all of these upgrades will need to be tested properly before they can be rolled out. The Bitcoin ABC team says it welcomes anyone and everyone who is willing to help out in this regard. Moreover, they are also looking for additional people who can contribute code to the project in the coming months. Cryptocurrency development should be about helping one another instead of creating more opposition.