Layer 1 blockchain
Bitcoin Cash ticker BCH
Summary
Miners hash block headers with SHA-256 until the result falls below a target; full nodes accept only blocks that follow their consensus rules and build on the valid chain with the most accumulated work. Since November 2020 the ASERT rule retargets difficulty every block toward ten-minute spacing with a two-day half-life. Value sits in unspent transaction outputs locked by Script; since May 2023 outputs can also carry CashTokens. Bitcoin Cash uses the same mining algorithm as Bitcoin, so the same hardware can mine either chain; the ASERT specification names switch mining between chains as a problem the earlier retargeting rule encouraged. 127891315
Design
- System
- Layer 1 blockchainPermissionless proof-of-work chain that split from Bitcoin on 1 August 2017 and has run its own consensus rules since; it is not a layer 2 or sidechain of Bitcoin.
- Settlement family
- Bitcoin family
- Scarce resource
- Work (proof of work)
- State model
- UTXO
- Finality
- Probabilistic
- Who makes blocks
- Miners, usually through pools, propose blocks by doing SHA-256 proof of work, and full nodes validate them. On 2026-09-27 the community site bch.info listed Bitcoin Cash Node as the recommended and commonly used node, with BCHD, Knuth, Flowee and Bitcoin Verde under upcoming nodes, and marked Bitcoin Verde as not currently in consensus.
- Fork choice
- Valid chain with the most accumulated work, plus node-level limits: Bitcoin Cash Node by default treats the block ten deep as final once its header has been known for two hours, rejects competing headers below it, and parks a competing chain that would rewind more than one block unless that chain gains much more work. These are operator-adjustable node defaults, not proof-of-work guarantees; nodes that saw different chains at finalization time could disagree (an inference from the rule, not a reviewed incident).
Qualifications
- Throughput · Unknown. Throughput applies to this chain, but no primary-source rate with a stated method was found, so no figure is given.
Tradeoffs
- Emphasizes
- Decentralization and Scalability
- Gives up
- Proof-of-work security margin and some simplicity of chain selection. Bitcoin Cash competes for the same SHA-256 hardware as Bitcoin, so its attack cost depends on the share of that hashrate it attracts at any moment; the rolling ten-block finalization is a partial defence that departs from pure most-work selection. Its demand-adjusted block size limit, which never falls below 32 MB, also means node storage and bandwidth costs can rise quickly if blocks fill.Whether a 32 MB floor with an adaptive ceiling stays home-node friendly depends on future demand: the block size proposal argues its limit could not practically outrun the older BIP-101 growth schedule, which its author treats as a guide to feasible capacity, but node costs would still rise if blocks fill. Hashrate share was not measured for this profile.
- Full node at home
- Practical at home 6131418Bitcoin Cash Node's setup guide says a full node stores the whole history in a few hundred gigabytes and takes a few hours to a day or more to sync; one public explorer (Bitcoin Unlimited's BCH explorer) reported about 247 GB of chain data on 2026-09-27. Pruning down to 550 MiB is supported. Because the block size limit never falls below 32 MB and rises with sustained demand, node costs could grow if blocks fill; block usage was not measured here.
- Throughput claims
- No classified figure recorded
Scaling layers
- smartBCH · Sidechain, status unknown 202122
Separate EVM-compatible chain with its own Tendermint validator set, elected at first by Bitcoin Cash miners' votes; its FAQ says the gateway for moving BCH in and out started as a proof-of-authority gateway, so users trust its operators rather than Bitcoin Cash proof of work. Its January 2024 release (v0.6.0) renamed the chain's gas token to SBCH and changed its recorded total supply; the latest tagged release, v0.6.1 of March 2025, is titled Urgent Staking Recovery. Whether it still runs a working BCH peg was not verified. Not a rollup.
Capabilities
| Capability | How it is provided | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Account abstraction | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Atomic swaps | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; Script has hash and time-lock operations (OP_SHA256, OP_HASH160, OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY), building blocks with which hash-locked, time-locked swap contracts can be built. A BCH to Monero swap design using covenants and adaptor signatures was published as a proof of concept on the Bitcoin Cash Research forum; production swap tools were not reviewed, so none is shown live. 1123 |
| Authenticated data publication | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
| Light clients | Built into the protocolLimited scope | Protocol, limited: consensus produces the proof-of-work header chain, and simplified payment verification with bloom filters and merkle proofs is documented; Bitcoin Cash Node serves bloom filters by default. Limits: the reviewed Bitcoin Cash Node options list no compact block filter index, and wallets such as Electron Cash rely on a network of servers. 121325 |
| Native staking or delegation | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| On-chain governance | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Parallel execution | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Payment or state channels | Unknown | No maintained payment or state channel network anchored to Bitcoin Cash was found in reviewed sources. |
| Programmable spending | Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition | Outputs are locked by Script. Upgrades added transaction introspection and larger integers (2022), CashTokens (2023), VM limits and big-integer arithmetic (2025), and bounded loops, functions, bitwise operations and standard pay-to-script outputs (2026; Bitcoin Cash Node's source records block 951,145 as the first mined under these rules). Contracts are output covenants, not an account VM with shared storage. 34571011 |
| Protocol-verified messaging | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Reversible transfers or recovery | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; absolute and relative time locks plus covenants are building blocks with which contracts can add delayed or reclaim spend paths; for example the CashScript Mecenas example lets the funder reclaim remaining coins. No cited source shows such a contract live on mainnet, and consensus cannot reverse a confirmed payment. 1124 |
| Rollups | Unknown | No rollup anchored to Bitcoin Cash was found in reviewed sources. smartBCH is a sidechain with its own validators, not a rollup. |
| Shielded transfers | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Signed partial offers | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
Reading these values
- How this feature is provided
- Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
- Structured assessment pending
- The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
- Unknown
- The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
- Earlier definition
- Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
- Reading across rows
- The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.
Ecosystem & custody
| Product type | Status | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Automated market makers | Established in the ecosystemCauldron | Cauldron is a constant-product AMM on Bitcoin Cash for CashTokens, built by Riften Labs. Liquidity is split across many small pools that individual providers run as their own contracts, and trades can combine several pools. Liquidity depth is not measured here. 2627 |
| Issuer-native stablecoins | ThinParyonUSD (PUSD), Moria MUSD | Both are dollar-pegged CashTokens borrowed against BCH collateral with oracle prices, not fiat-backed deposits. ParyonUSD (renamed from ParityUSD in March 2026) launched on mainnet on 2026-04-30 with redemptions disabled; the project's September 2026 report says redemptions went live on 8 May 2026. Moria's roadmap describes MUSD v1 deployment from May 2025 after a v0 test. Tether ended issuance and redemption of USDT on the Simple Ledger Protocol on 2025-09-01; those tokens still move but lost issuer support. 2829303132 |
| Algorithmic stablecoins | Unknown | No source was cited for absence, so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown. Earlier finding: no uncollateralized algorithmic stablecoin with material usage was found; the BCH-collateralized stablecoins are listed in the native stablecoin row. Absence was not exhaustively verified. |
| Bridges | ThinTHORChain cross-chain swaps, NEAR Intents, smartBCH gateway (status not verified) | There is no canonical bridge. THORChain lists Bitcoin Cash among the chains it swaps natively, settling in real BCH rather than a wrapped token, and NEAR Intents lists Bitcoin Cash on its proof-of-authority bridge. The smartBCH gateway moved BCH to an EVM sidechain; its current operation was not verified. No widely used custodial wrapped BCH token was reviewed. Risk: THORChain holds inbound BCH in vaults controlled by its node operators through threshold signatures, so users rely on that operator set and its bonded collateral. NEAR Intents' bridge uses a proof-of-authority model, and the reviewed page does not say who holds deposited BCH. The smartBCH gateway started as a proof-of-authority gateway run by known operators. None of these is secured by Bitcoin Cash consensus. 2021333438 |
| Block explorers | Established in the ecosystemBCH Explorer (Bitcoin Unlimited), Tokenview BCH explorer | The community site bch.info lists nine explorers, including Blockchair, 3xpl and Blockchain.com; two were loaded directly for this review. A public explorer's view is its own node or indexer's data, not independent validation. 161819 |
| Hardware wallets | Established in the ecosystemLedger, Trezor | See the custody section: both vendors list BCH as supported in their own apps. bch.info also lists KeepKey and Satochip, which were not checked against vendor pages. 17353637 |
Hardware-wallet custody
| Device maker | Status | What users can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | Native supportSame as native: Yes | Can: Set up a BCH account and manage BCH through the Ledger Wallet app while the private keys stay on the hardware device Can: Use BCH on Ledger Stax, Flex, Nano Gen5 and Nano Classic devices, per Ledger's BCH page Can: Buy or swap BCH through providers inside Ledger WalletLedger's BCH page does not mention CashTokens; token handling on Ledger was not verified. 35 |
| Trezor | Native supportSame as native: Yes | Can: Send and receive BCH in Trezor Suite, which Trezor says supports Bitcoin Cash natively Can: Use BCH on Trezor devices; Trezor's coin list marks it as supported on all models Can: Buy, sell or swap BCH through providers in Trezor SuiteTrezor's BCH page does not mention CashTokens; token handling on Trezor was not verified. 3637 |
Public data
iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for Bitcoin Cash yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.
| Lookup | Status | What it covers and its limits |
|---|---|---|
| Address or account | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Tokens and assets | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| NFTs | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Transactions | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
Sourced developments
Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.
Publication date · newest first
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Bitcoin Cash Node v29.1.0 minor release
Bitcoin Cash Node released v29.1.0, a minor release with RPC and REST usability improvements, bug fixes and performance work, and recommended that users of earlier releases upgrade.
- Implementation:Released
- Release:released 2026-07-29
- Activation:not a protocol activation
Sources: Bitcoin Cash Node — Announcing Bitcoin Cash Node v29.1.0 (external site) · Bitcoin Cash Node (GitHub) — Bitcoin Cash Node release 29.1.0 (external site) · Bitcoin Cash Node — Bitcoin Cash Node v29.1.0 release notes (external site)
-
Bitcoin Cash Node moved its funding multisig and replaced an unreachable signer
Bitcoin Cash Node said it moved its development fund (about 2,048 BCH) to a new 3-of-5 multisig on 27 May 2026, replacing one co-signer: its founding lead maintainer, freetrader, whom the project said nobody had been able to contact since May 2024.
- Implementation:funds moved to the new multisig on 2026-05-27 per the notice
- Release:announced 2026-06-10
- Activation:not a protocol activation
-
ParyonUSD launched a BCH-collateralized stablecoin on Bitcoin Cash
ParyonUSD (formerly ParityUSD) announced its mainnet launch: users can borrow the dollar-pegged PUSD CashToken against BCH or stake PUSD in a stability pool. At launch the minimum collateral ratio was temporarily 180% and redemptions were disabled.
- Implementation:contracts deployed on mainnet per the project
- Release:launched 2026-04-30
- Activation:live since launch; redemptions enabled 2026-05-08 per the project; not a protocol change
Sources: ParyonUSD — ParyonUSD Launch Day (external site) · ParyonUSD — ParyonUSD (external site) · ParyonUSD — New Name, Familiar Face (external site) · ParyonUSD — State of PUSD #1 (external site)
-
Bitcoin Cash Node v29.0.0 released for the May 2026 network upgrade
Bitcoin Cash Node released v29.0.0, which implements the 15 May 2026 upgrade: standard pay-to-script outputs, bounded loops, function definition and invocation, and re-enabled bitwise operations. The project called upgrading before 15 May mandatory for its users.
- Proposal:four CHIPs included in the 2026-05-15 upgrade specification
- Implementation:implemented in Bitcoin Cash Node v29.0.0
- Release:released 2026-01-09
- Activation:activated on mainnet at the 2026-05-15 12:00 UTC median-time rule; first block under the new rules is 951,145 per Bitcoin Cash Node source
Sources: Bitcoin Cash Node — Announcing Bitcoin Cash Node v29.0.0 (external site) · Bitcoin Cash Node (GitHub) — Bitcoin Cash Node release 29.0.0 (external site) · Bitcoin Cash Node — Bitcoin Cash Node v29.0.0 release notes (external site) · Bitcoin Cash upgrade specifications (Bitcoin Cash Node) — 2026-MAY-15 Network Upgrade Specification (external site) · Bitcoin Cash Node — Bitcoin Cash Node v29.1.0 release notes (external site) · Bitcoin Cash Node — chainparams.cpp (Bitcoin Cash Node source) (external site)
Topics your AI can explain
Your AI can explain these topics for Bitcoin Cash through the connection, with sources.
Known gaps
What this profile's review did not establish:
- No throughput figure is listed; no primary-source rate with a stated method was found.
- Bitcoin Cash's share of SHA-256 hashrate, and so the cost of attacking it, was not measured.
- Whether smartBCH is still running and whether its BCH gateway still works was not verified.
- No payment or state channel network and no rollup anchored to Bitcoin Cash was found; absence was not exhaustively checked.
- Ledger and Trezor pages list the BCH coin but say nothing about CashTokens; token support on either device was not verified.
- Stablecoin supply, AMM liquidity and bridge volumes were not measured. ParyonUSD's redemption start date comes from the project's own report, not from on-chain checks.
- Only two of the nine explorers listed on bch.info were checked in detail; several of the others blocked or rate-limited automated access.
- The block size proposal gives the maximum yearly growth of its control curve as +100% in one section and +200% in another; the stated per-block rate compounds to about double, so this profile uses the 'about double' reading.
- Mainnet activation of the May 2026 upgrade rests on Bitcoin Cash Node's own source code, which records block 951,145 as the first mined under the new rules; it was not cross-checked against an independent explorer.
- KeepKey and Satochip support comes from the community wallet list only, not from vendor pages.
Sources
Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.
- UAHF Technical Specification (August 2017) (external site)
- ASERT Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (aserti3-2d) (external site)
- 2022-MAY-15 Network Upgrade Specification (external site)
- 2025-MAY-15 Network Upgrade Specification (external site)
- 2026-MAY-15 Network Upgrade Specification (external site)
- CHIP-2023-04 Adaptive Blocksize Limit Algorithm for Bitcoin Cash (external site)
- CHIP-2022-02 CashTokens: Token Primitives for Bitcoin Cash (external site)
- Proof of Work (external site)
- Blockchain (external site)
- chainparams.cpp (Bitcoin Cash Node source) (external site)
- Script (external site)
- Simple Payment Verification (external site)
- bitcoind command-line options (external site)
- Setup instructions (external site)
- Nodes (external site)
- Explorers (external site)
- Wallets (external site)
- Bitcoin Cash Explorer (external site)
- BCH Explorer (external site)
- smartBCH FAQ (external site)
- smartBCH release v0.6.0 (2024-01-27) (external site)
- smartBCH release v0.6.1 (2025-03-30) (external site)
- Monero-BCH Atomic Swaps (external site)
- CashScript examples (external site)
- Electron Cash (external site)
- Cauldron DEX documentation (external site)
- Cauldron whitepaper (external site)
- ParyonUSD Launch Day (external site)
- New Name, Familiar Face (external site)
- State of PUSD #1 (external site)
- Roadmap (external site)
- Tether Provides Update on Transition Plan for Legacy Blockchains (external site)
- What is THORChain and RUNE? (external site)
- UTXO chain clients (external site)
- Bitcoin Cash Wallet - Buy, manage & hold your BCH (external site)
- Supported coins and assets (external site)
- Bitcoin Cash wallet (external site)
- Bridging overview (external site)
Report an error
Found something wrong or out of date? Reporting is free, and every chain goes through the same process. Published corrections appear in the public log.
Funding disclosure
Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding