Bitcoin SV (BSV) is on a steady march towards its return to Genesis. On October 30, the BSV Node team has rolled out version 0.2.2 of the node implementation, bringing even more improvements for miners in preparation for the ultimate Genesis protocol upgrade in February 2020.
Version 0.2.2 is not a required upgrade for the production network; however, users of the Scaling Test Network (STN) will need to upgrade to version 0.2.2 due to the STN reset.
Notably, version 0.2.2 allows for increased transaction throughput capacity—it’s able to process more transactions per second as well as produce blocks with higher transaction numbers. Tests done on STN demonstrated a boost from version 0.2.1’s sustained 200 transactions per second (tps) to an estimated 400 tps for version 0.2.2.
Other features in this release include parallel transaction validation, or the capability to simultaneously validate multiple transactions; incremental block assembly, which allows miners to continuously build bigger blocks; internal block streaming, which reduces the memory requirements for processing large blocks; and, the Scaling Test Network reset.
As the BSV Node team points out, resetting the STN—already approaching 2 terabytes of data—will simplify testing on the blockchain.
The improvements included in this version have required extensive changes to the software and due to the complexity of these changes, we are designating this release as a ‘beta’ version. We encourage operators to upgrade to this version but advise caution and careful monitoring, especially for miners. We also recommend that miners maintain an instance of version 0.2.1 as a precaution.
The features included in version 0.2.2 will bring substantial improvements to BSV’s capability, as well as pave the way for future software capacity improvements. Daniel Connolly, lead developer of the BSV Node project, tells CoinGeek:
This release is big step forward in terms of scalability. Parallel transaction validation and incremental block assembly are essential for creating blocks with large numbers of transactions. The results from preliminary testing on the Scaling Test Network show the outstanding performance gains from these features and we expect further gains as we continue to build on these features. The Bitcoin SV Node implementation team has done a tremendous job on this release.
Version 0.2.2 comes ahead of the Genesis upgrade, scheduled for February 2020. As the name implies, this upgrade will bring BSV as close to the original protocol as possible with several protocol restoration changes—ultimately leading to the complete removal of limits on default block sizes, paving the way for unlimited scaling to the BSV blockchain. Miners and the network will accept what block sizes are needed to satisfy market demand.
By returning to Genesis, aka going back to Satoshi’s plan to scale massively, BSV is following Bitcoin’s original vision to become the world’s digital money and public data ledger. By scaling to the needs of the world’s businesses and economies, and maintaining the stability of the original Bitcoin protocol, the BSV blockchain will be the best platform for global enterprise usage.
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