The Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain has undergone a hard fork at block height 620538. Clients on version 1.0.0 of the blockchain consider the new block valid. However, those clients which have not upgraded, of which there appears to be a sizable number, consider it invalid.

In a stated bid to restore the original vision of Bitcoin SV, which is ostensibly the network’s driving philosophy, the network has successfully executed the ‘Genesis’ upgrade. The upgrade came complete with a hard fork, which was first announced on Jan 20, and is described by the development team as more of a ‘protocol restoration’ than an upgrade.

It appears that making Bitcoin SV as close to the original Bitcoin protocol as possible is the main goal, according to the official statement. Specific changes include removing block size limits, while also ‘restoring full original functionality’ of the Bitcoin Script and the Pay to Script hash that was standardized in Bitcoin Improvement Protocol 16 (BIP 16). BitMEX’s Research team has stated it has not detected a chainsplit.

Bitfinex announced that it will support the new BSV hard fork, becoming one of the first exchanges to make this announcement.

Genesis and the Original Bitcoin Protocol

The project’s lead and technical developers, Daniel Connolly and Steve Shadders, have categorized the intentions of the hard fork into three main goals: restoring the original protocol, improving scaling, and ‘stabilizing the protocol.’

Besides the aforementioned actions taken to ostensibly return Bitcoin SV to Bitcoin’s original vision, the network’s developers also want to work on solving scalability problems by removing the block size limits entirely. Miners will be in charge of deciding block size limits based on network activity.

The overall agenda of this change appears to be so that Bitcoin SV can attempt to handle an “array of data, tokens, smart contracts, content delivery, enterprise applications, the Internet of Things, and other uses.”

Bitcoin SV in the Spotlight Again

The Bitcoin SV network has a habit of making the headlines. News of the hard fork had some traders hoping for a price pump that they could advantage of. At the same time, reports found that a lot of the trading associated with BSV is allegedly wash trading.

Bitcoin SV has been controversial for several reasons, though that has not stopped it from remaining as one of the top tokens by market capitalization, which at the time of publishing is roughly $5.1 billion.