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Quasar hard fork: Bitcoin SV upgrades block size to 2GB Quasar hard fork: Bitcoin SV upgrades block size to 2GB
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Quasar hard fork: Bitcoin SV upgrades block size to 2GB

Quasar hard fork: Bitcoin SV upgrades block size to 2GB

Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.

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A planned hard fork has been executed on Bitcoin SV (BSV) despite deliberation over the timing of the scheduled upgrade, dubbed “Quasar”.

The fork has upped the protocol’s block size limit from 128MB to 2GB—a development that according to the owners of the BSV project, Bitcoin Association, will help BSV scale to “1000+ transactions per second” within months.

Questions over timing

BitMEX Research described discrepancies over the fork’s timing in a tweet hours before its occurrence—announcing it would occur at 2pm GMT as per Quasar’s code on GitHub; contrary to Bitcoin Association’s original claim it would occur at “approximately” 1pm GMT.

Yet as outlined by BitMEX Research, the crypto research arm of ubiquitous Bitcoin derivatives exchange, BitMEX, the 16th block after 2pm GMT was in fact the first to confirm the new upgrade yielding a block size of 145.7MB.

A second assertion by BitMEX Research appeared to ruffle the feathers amongst select BSV proponents, however, when the research outfit suggested their discovery of orphaned blocks—seen in a lower-difficulty branch ahead of the main BSV chain—amounted to “consensus issues”.

As claimed by @klimenos, the fault did not lie in BSV’s core code but with the BitMEX Research team—who may have failed to upgrade their node software to the Quasar-compatible v0.2.0.

The “Original Bitcoin”?

BSV awaits more radical changes to its protocol, however. The Genesis upgrade, planned for February 2020, will altogether remove the block size limit for the 8th-largest blockchain protocol by market capitalization.

Yet Quasar’s apparent technological success would not likely to bring BSV any closer to earning its self-professed title of the “original Bitcoin”. As previously reported by CryptoSlate, the upgrade may come off as being fundamentally flawed and a thinly-veiled marketing attempt by noted BSV proponent Craig Wright—a figure widely impugned by both the cryptocurrency community and the courts for claiming he is Satoshi Nakamoto without substantiation.

Bitcoin SV Market Data

At the time of press 1:18 am UTC on Apr. 6, 2020, Bitcoin SV is ranked #9 by market cap and the price is up 0.88% over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin SV has a market capitalization of $2.98 billion with a 24-hour trading volume of $433.87 million. Learn more about Bitcoin SV ›

Bitcoin SV

1:18 am UTC on Apr. 6, 2020

$166.87

0.88%
Crypto Market Summary

At the time of press 1:18 am UTC on Apr. 6, 2020, the total crypto market is valued at at $278.2 billion with a 24-hour volume of $59.32 billion. Bitcoin dominance is currently at 64.79%. Learn more about the crypto market ›

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