Bitcoin Cash Node Backs 1-Minute Blocks for May 2027

Bitcoin Cash sets Nov. 15 for Chipnet testing

The Bitcoin Cash Node team said exchanges, block explorers and wallets built around a 10-minute interval face more work than they did for past upgrades. The maintainers called on operators and miners on Chipnet to install a preview build and told mainnet operators to wait for the production release.

The specification sets the Chipnet threshold at noon UTC on Nov. 15, based on the median timestamp of recent blocks. Mainnet uses the same method for its May 15 target, so the actual activation depends on when the chain reaches the threshold. The team’s implementation merge request was still marked draft.

The preview follows testing on a temporary network that began in October. General Protocols, a Bitcoin Cash application developer, recorded its approval on Nov. 4 after earlier abstaining pending more review. Zcash also tested a shorter block interval on a separate network before setting a mainnet activation block for its upgrade.

One-minute blocks change the wait for BCH payments

A payment gets its first on-chain confirmation when miners include it in a block. The proposal models about 95% of single-confirmation waits coming in under three minutes with the new target. Actual intervals vary because miners find blocks at irregular times.

Some Bitcoin Cash payment services already accept transfers before the first confirmation. Wallet and payments provider Paytaca said faster blocks could help when a merchant or an application needs to wait for the chain to record a transaction, including certain trades, loans and escrow payments.

An exchange can set its own confirmation threshold for deposits. Under the proposal, each block would represent less mining work on average, so a service that counts blocks would need to review what its threshold represents. A service could ask for more blocks while targeting a similar wait, and customers could see confirmations tick up more often while the deposit remains pending.

Smaller blocks preserve the BCH supply schedule

The specification reduces the target mining difficulty, block subsidy and size limit per block to about one tenth of their previous levels. With about ten times as many blocks, the design keeps issuance and available block space roughly steady per hour and preserves the 21 million BCH cap and halving schedule.

More frequent blocks also mean more block headers for software to track. The specification estimates that header data would grow by about 42 megabytes per year, up from about 4.2 megabytes. That adds work for wallet developers whose software verifies payments by tracking headers.

Alternative.me’s Crypto Fear and Greed Index stood at 13 on Nov. 14, in Extreme Fear territory amid a wider crypto market decline. Our coverage of falling stablecoin supply and Bitcoin ETF outflows tracks the broader pullback.

The next milestones are the Chipnet transition and a production node release. The announcement gave no exact release date and disclosed no changes to exchanges’ deposit confirmation requirements.