BCHN maintainers’ commitment to CHIP-2025-03 Faster Blocks for Bitcoin Cash
The Bitcoin Cash Node maintainers hereby commits to implementing CHIP-2025-03 Faster Blocks for Bitcoin Cash in the next node release, for mainnet activation on May 15th, 2027.
This upgrade has seen the most controversy among the Bitcoin Cash community since 2021, it has not been easy for us to call it given the lively discussions that are still ongoing. This change affects a much wider number of services and users, unlike many of our past upgrades.
In contrast to other prominent upgrades like Cashtokens, various Script upgrades and ABLA, this is not an “operators must take a few minutes to upgrade, everyone else can sit tight, people who want it can then enjoy it” upgrade. From exchanges to explorers to wallets, a significant part of the ecosystem operates on assumptions of a 10-minute blocktime, so upgrade costs are higher than anything we have done so far.
The benefits claimed are significant, but controversial: There has been no lack of skepticism towards its utility, some of them from well-known and well-respected community members and developers. As the plumbers at the base layer, we understand these concerns.
On the other hand, it is important to understand valid arguments for the proposal. A shorter blocktime has simmered in BCH’s background all the way since 2018, so this is not a brand new proposal that came out of nowhere last year. While the reduced latency to first confirmation is of questionable use through BCH’s past, increasingly sophisticated BCH-native smart contract usecases and startups changed that in recent years.
The CHIP has exhaustively listed comparisons of its pros and cons, and we urge as many members of the community to read them if you have not already. It is one of the longest CHIPs we have seen, and has achieved excellent coverage given what’s practically possible.
At the end of the day, we do have to take a stand. It is our assessment that BCH is ready to activate this CHIP in May 2027.
Let’s do this.
For those with concerns over safety, our technical work has now matured to the point where we are reasonably sure of its stability. The fact remains that we are in extraordinarily turbulent times in terms of software safety, so we’ll urge interested parties to proactively take part in testing on Chipnet these coming months, more than any upgrade we have experienced so far.
Common Chipnet nodes are expiring in a few days. While a proper release will come later just as they did in the past years, we have a preview release on the same consensus rules, whose source code is at
https://gitlab.com/cculianu/bitcoin-cash-node/-/commits/blocktime/wip_preview
and binaries only for Chipnet can be downloaded at
https://download.bitcoincashnode.org/misc/builds/upgrade2027_temp/
We urge all Chipnet operators and miners to upgrade your nodes ASAP. For mainnet and rest of the testnets, please sit tight and wait for a proper release a few weeks from now.
Sincerely,
The Bitcoin Cash Node team.