Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV) is one of the most well-known and controversial projects in the cryptocurrency space. The self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, is one of its biggest proponents. The network has now completed the planned Genesis hard fork. It’s intended to bring BSV’s blockchain closer to the original Bitcoin protocol, which was released back in 2009.
The Genesis upgrade on BSV’s blockchain took place at block 620,538, making it the first network-wide hard fork since the Bitcoin Hash War in November 2018. The latter caused the split of the Bitcoin Cash network into two separate protocols – Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin SV.
The Bitcoin SV team, however, claims that the Genesis hard fork is not an upgrade. Instead, it is more accurate to call it a protocol “restoration,” since they intend using it to return to the original Bitcoin protocol, unlock the massive scalability and intriguing technical capabilities on the Bitcoin network, and stabilize the protocol.
In restoring the original protocol, the BSV team claims that the recent hard fork contains several changes which include removing the block limits on the network, removing harmful changes that were made to Bitcoin, and restoring the full original functionality of the Bitcoin Script (the programming language used to design the Bitcoin protocol).
By removing the default hard cap for block sizes, miners will have the freedom to manage the block size limits depending on the network activities. BSV developers believe this would make the network scale a lot faster, just as Satoshi intended it to be.
Additionally, the update also reportedly comes with the ability to stabilize the protocol. The BSV team claims that this would ensure that the network aligns with the Bitcoin core design, which was intended to “set in stone” throughout the rest of its lifetime.
With the Genesis hard fork now completed, BitGo users will not be able to receive BSV funds via their wallets due to compatibility issues, Cyptopatoto reported in December.
The California-based cryptocurrency management company said in its announcement that it would disable most of the functionalities of its BSV wallets, making it impossible for users to receive BSV transactions. However, customers who failed to move or convert their BSV to Bitcoin before the hard fork will only be able to sweep the wallets.
The article was first published on: Feb 4, 2020