Bitcoin Unlimited and nChain Unveil Joint Plans for 1 Gigabyte Blocks on Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Unlimited and nChain haveannounceda partnership to test 1 GB blocks and Visa scale transaction speeds of 3,000TPS on the Bitcoin protocol. The joint Gigablock Testnet Initiative received overwhelming support from Bitcoin unlimited, after members concluded a vote on September 23, 2017.

The project titledBUIP065: Gigablock Testnet Initiative: A Global Test Network for Bottleneck Analysis Under Very High Levels of Transaction Throughput, was made public by Peter Rizun on abitcoin forum thread. It went up for a BU membership vote on September 18 alongside BUIP062,63,64, 66 and 67.

BU and nChain will commit resources and funding for BUIP065 to the tune of $1.5 million spread out over 5 years with each contributing 50% of the overall budget. Also, a team of professors and staff from the British Columbia University will assist with additional research capacity.

Peter Rizun, who has been a vocal advocate of bigger blocks, will work with other BU members Andrea Suisani, Peter Tschipper Andrew Stone, Andrew Clifford and Erik Beijnoff.

Critics of Bitcoin Core Scaling Approach

nChain and BU are part of a faction that is critical of Bitcoin Core's off chain scaling approach. The scaling debate earlier this year was down to a disagreement on the need for bigger blocks via a hard fork, or a soft fork capacity increase via Segregated Witness. The result was a hard fork on August 1, 2017, which led to 2 chains -Bitcoin Cashand Bitcoin.

Craig Wright, who some believe him to be the anonymous creator of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto says Segregated Witness is a corruption of the original bitcoin vision. He too has lashed out at Segregated Witness more than once for introducing unnecessary risks to the bitcoin protocol, most recently at July'sFuture of Bitcoin Conference.

As Chief Scientist at nChain, Craig has marshaled the company's resources behind efforts to scale bitcoin on-chain. Stefan Matthews, CEO of nChain Group, said:

"Many people believe the bitcoin network can power faster transactions and enterprise-level capabilities. At nChain, we put funding and action behind our beliefs, in order to make massive on-chain scaling a reality."

Many people believe the bitcoin network can power faster transactions and enterprise-level capabilities. At nChain, we put funding and action behind our beliefs, in order to make massive on-chain scaling a reality.

Supporters of bigger blocks and on chain scaling have formed an active community around Bitcoin Cash. The fork of bitcoin made a bold move of increasing capacity to a default 8MB blocks and scraping away Segregated Witness. Some Bitcoin companies have welcomed this vision of Bitcoin and migrated services to support it.

Earlier today, Bitpayannouncedupgrades to its BitPay and Copay wallets apps to support Bitcoin Cash.

Any successful scaling milestones by the GigaBlock initiative will first be implemented on Bitcoin Cash. 2 independent tests by nChain and BU have already proved 32MB and 64 MB blocks viable. Bitcoin Cash Gigablocks might happen sooner than many expect.