Bitcoin SV Alpha Release Published By Nchain

Nchain’s open source codebase was expected to be published in the first week of September. But the publication was instead released on August 29. Nchain nevertheless announced that a more polished version will be published during the first week of September.

Bitcoin ABC 17.2 is the base of the current alpha code. Some differences on the Bitcoin ABC 17.2 for this code include a new soft limit of 32MB, OP_MUL, OP_INVERT, LSHIFT and RSHIFT integration, the limit of 201 opcodes per script has been removed, and the automatic replay protection for November 15, 2018, was removed.

The fact that there is not much of a reference in the code for the 128MB block size increase has caused some squabbles in the community. A functional tests addition was enforced to the code seven days ago, and it says: “Add a couple of new functional tests to check for being able to set the block size flags via the bitcoind.conf file and to check if we can actually process 128M blocks.” It is the belief of many that there will be new changes to the code going forward after the initial alpha code release. The Github repository explains: “This is an Alpha release, the purpose of which is to provide a preview of the code in response to requests from miners and pool operators.” “This is not intended to be a release candidate. Work is still in progress targeting a beta release for 1st week of September in line with the initial Bitcoin SV announcement.”

A mining pool has equaled been launched so as to allow miners to point their hashrate to the Bitcoin SV client. The website Svpool.net takes you directly to the SV Pool’s registration page on which is being displayed a circular picture of a Chinese dragon and a Chinese-written welcome message. A rough translation of the website states: “Welcome to SV Pool — We are a brand new public pool, in line with the original Nakamoto vision and Bitcoin SV agreement. Pre-register to get updates — We will release the initial version of the public pool in September and the full version in November.”