Bitcoin, as historically the first cryptocurrency, has undergone and survived many so-called hardforks and softforks. Typically, new projects have been attributed to the desire of independent developers to improve certain networking aspects of Bitcoin. But not all projects have been and are successful. After the separation, their paths diverge.
Let’s take a look at the most famous Bitcoin hardfork options.
Bitcoin XT (2014)
Bitcoin XT was one of the first notable hardforks of the first cryptocurrency. While Bitcoin allowed up to seven transactions per second, Bitcoin XT offered 24 transactions per second. To accomplish this, it was proposed to increase the block size from one megabyte to eight.
Bitcoin XT initially achieved some success, with between 30,000 and more than 40,000 nodes running on its blockchain in late summer 2015. In response, a group of developers created Bitcoin Classic in early 2016. The project still exists today, and some developers continue to support Bitcoin Classic. However, the novelty-interested part of the crypto community, as is usually the case, soon moved on to other, more recent, options.
Bitcoin Unlimited (2016)
Bitcoin Unlimited was and basically remained an offshoot of the Bitcoin blockchain, proposed after problems began to mount in the community over slow transaction processing and rising fees. The idea was for miners to determine their own block size through “emergent consensus” (emergent consensus). The idea sparked heated discussions, but it went no further than that. Bitcoin Cash has gotten a Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH ABC) branch as a result of another hardfork of its own. ABC stands for Adjustable Block-size Cap – Adjustable Block-size Limit. Bitcoin Unlimited has thus achieved the realization of its idea, but not as an offshoot of Bitcoin, but as a
A hardfork of a hardfork of a hardfork.
Bitcoin Cash (2017)
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was implemented as a Bitcoin hardfork in August 2017 as a response to the SegWit softfork. Some developers disagreed with the SegWit protocol update and decided to go a different route.
The main goal of Bitcoin Cash is to increase the number of transactions the network can process. To achieve the goal, the enthusiasts did not use the SegWit protocol, but increased the block size first from 1MB to 8MB and then to 32MB