A Bitcoin Cash hard fork was implemented earlier today as of block 58268. Although the network-split initially met with a hiccup[1], the upgrade has now successfully completed.
Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork
The hard fork sees the Bitcoin Cash network implement two new features. They are Segwit recovery and Schnorr signatures.
The Segwit recovery[2] means network participants can now recover funds that were sent accidentally to Segwit addresses.
Before today, this was impossible due to the “enforcement of the new CLEANSTACK rule” which was implemented in the last upgrade in November.
The second new feature is the Schnorr Signatures. This is a digital signature scheme that allows for complex signing abilities.
According to news.Bitcoin.com[3]:
“the basics of Schnorr signatures can slash roughly 4% off current transaction storage. In the future, after another Schnorr related upgrade, the scheme could provide for public signature aggregation and more complex sign-to-contract concepts”.
Segwit Recovery & Schnorr Signatures
Invented by Claus Schnorr, the signature scheme was patented for years and that patent has only recently expired. Now Bitcoin Cash developers have added the preliminary basics of it to the main chain.
The Schnorr scheme means multiple parties can transact with simple multi-party “aggregation schemes”. At 64 bytes, Schnorr signatures are smaller than the traditional ECDSA signatures which run at 70 bytes in size. The overall scalability of the network will be enhanced when further upgrades and the
“implementation of public signature aggregation” are enabled. Predictions suggest the network’s scaling abilites could be improved by reducing blockchain storage and bandwidth by 20-25%.
NewsBitcoin.com explains further:
“When Schnorr is combined with concepts like pay-to-public-key-hash (P2PKH) addresses and the recently added opcode OP_CHECKSIG, other benefits
