Since Bitcoin CASH developer Bitcoin ABC officially announced that the second hard fork will go ahead as planned on May 15, there has been a lot of discussion in the community about the hard fork.
In these discussions, most people are in favor of the hard fork, believing that the hard fork will promote the development of Bitcoin Cash. But others see the hard fork as unnecessary, a desperate struggle for Bitcoin Cash, a fake need. Is there really no need for a second hard fork in BCH?
BCH has made three major changes to the hard fork. The first is to expand the block size to 32MB. This was followed by the addition or reactivation of script opcodes that were previously disabled for Bitcoin, including OP_CAT, OP_AND, OP_OR, OP_XOR, OP_DIV, OP_MOD, OP_SPLIT, OP_NUM2BIN and OP_BIN2NUM. Finally, increase the OP_RETURN data carrier size to 220 bytes.
Expanding the block size to 32MB should come as no surprise. After all, bitcoin Cash was born with the idea that its block size could grow. Since BCH is aimed at everyone in the world, it is essential to think ahead in order to avoid blockages like BTC. BCH’s goal is to reach VISA level transaction processing speed and process more transactions, and will expand to 1GB, 1TB in the future, so 32MB is the way to go.
Opponents argue that increasing the block size to 32MB will cause some technical problems in the network, and our existing network cannot withstand such pressure. There were doubts when 8MB was first proposed, but it turned out that 8MB was not a problem at all, and 8MB was tested by a large number of transactions last year, and the network was stable. So whether 32MB will work in the future is not a matter of guesswork, but of use. In addition to the current network development is very fast, as to whether these problems will be difficult to say. If the naysayers’ problems do arise in the future, just find a way to solve them. The process of development is a process of identifying problems and solving them, rather than being held back by fear of problems. Only continuous innovation, continuous trial and error, can move forward. Therefore, 32MB is necessary to satisfy the growing BCH user base, enable BCH to process more transactions at a faster speed and improve the user experience.
Rebooting those Op-codes and expanding the OP_RETURN capacity was clearly intended to provide more BCH-based applications in the future, just like Ethereum does today. For digital currency, transaction is only the most basic application, while solving more practical problems and applying to more scenarios is the necessary condition for its long-term and stable development.
In view of this, the opponents think that this is a redundant means of BCH in the face of the powerful application of BCE based on side chain and lightning network. BCH was born with an inclusive and open mind. It once said that it could use side chain, lightning network and smart contract. It’s much simpler to achieve these goals through a hard fork. At the same time, rebooting the code would simply return BCH to how bitcoin was originally designed, not superfluous. The reason why BCE had to use isolated witness and Lightning network in order to solve the transaction problem of the main chain in the later period was that it banned the original codes and restricted the development of the main chain. BCH itself has a strong main chain, and when BCH has more applications, the two will complement each other to make BCH more perfect and its value can be fully utilized. The reason why BCE’s share of market value continues to decline is precisely because it ditched those. Although some people think that opening up forbidden script code is risky, it is a necessary way to develop, and only by trying, can we discover more possibilities. Therefore, a hard fork reboot of op-Code is necessary.
The expansion of OP_RETURN capacity is also intended to make BCH more open to achieve more functions. For example, ethereum was originally intended to be built on the Bitcoin chain. However, due to the conservative core developers, they did not support the design of V-god and even shortened the space of OP_RETURN to 40, which led to the current public chain ETH. If new ideas want to run on the BCH chain in the future, OP_RETURN’s expanded capacity will provide plenty of room for them.
To sum up, for the better development of BCH in the future, this hard fork is very necessary. This is also the basis for its continuous innovation and progress.