The Bitcoin SV Node team has released the second beta for February’s Genesis upgrade. Coming exactly one month after the first beta release of Bitcoin v1.0.0, the latest version includes a number of new features such as 1GB default mempool size, parallel block validation, and changes the default transaction fee.

Bitcoin SV Node Project Technical Director Steve Shadders said:

The beta2 release builds on the previous beta release and include enhancements and bug fixes to address issues discovered as a result of our extensive testing of previous versions. Note that beta2 includes changes to some default configuration values.

A full list of changes and bug fixes is available on the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision GitHub page here. The development team encourages all those testing the software to upgrade to the latest version.

Beta2 offers a better preview of what’s coming in Genesis

Beta2 also enables validation of non-standard transactions on the Bitcoin mainnet, though these transactions will only occur after Genesis is enabled. It also fixes a bug in the previous beta where validating a non-standard transaction could lock up a node for more than one minute. It also allowed BSV developers to “clean up” a lot of code that had been added to Bitcoin over the years to deal with full blocks.

Parallel block validation allows miners to continue mining a block even if the previous one is especially large. This is vital to scalability as it allows blocks to more reliably confirm every 10 minutes or so. On blockchains that allow only sequential validation, a large block can lead to confirmation delays for other users.

The latest beta also changes the default transaction fee to less than one satoshi per byte: (default txfee = 0.5 sat/byte, default minrelaytxfee = 0.25 sat/byte). Previously, the default fee (inherited from Bitcoin ABC’s BCH) had been denominated in (whole) satoshis per byte. As coin prices rose, many felt this could be too high for data streams, and needed to be set at something lower than Bitcoin’s smallest unit.

Lowering transaction fees is a feature aimed at promoting high-volume data transactions. Along with limitless scaling potential, this is one of BSV’s key selling points for enterprise users and will drive Bitcoin growth in that arena.

Already, services that broadcast continuous streams of data to the blockchain (such as cloud computing platforms, plus WeatherSV and Preev) have demonstrated a need for far lower fees. WeatherSV announced a transaction fee deal with the Mempool mining pool back in November 2019. This is something that had never happened, and indeed wasn’t possible, on the limited BTC blockchain.

Earlier this week, Taal Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (formerly Squire Mining Ltd.) announced it would reduce the fee on transactions it would accept from 1 satoshi/byte to 0.5. This also allows miners to negotiate fees in stable fiat amounts rather than Bitcoin, thus becoming price makers—and making fees reliably low. CoinGeek Mining confirmed it would also match the fee reductions.

The beta release and testing schedule is going according to plan, and undergoes rigorous testing on three different testnets to make sure everything goes smoothly. For more information and updates, stay tuned.

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