Like last year, on November 15th, 2019 there will be another upgrade for Bitcoin Cash.
It’s a fork that introduces some changes to the protocol, but this time without creating a new cryptocurrency.
The changes that will be introduced will not be particularly substantial, which means that there will probably be no major changes for the average user.
The first novelty that will be introduced with this fork is the so-called “MinimalData“, which will allow the creation of new tools based on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. Among these, it will also be possible to add Lightning Network, currently not possible on BCH, which however does not seem to have been programmed yet.
The second novelty will be the implementation of Schnorr signatures, making transactions lighter and more efficient, thus reducing the need for bandwidth and storage, and increasing the processing speed.
The goal is to make BCH more scalable, both in terms of speed and number of transactions, which will improve the potential it can express.
Because of the fork, Bitcoin Cash users will have to update their nodes to versions higher than 0.20.0. Nodes that are not updated will no longer be able to interact with the BCH network after the upgrade.
However, the updates have been tested for three months, during this time, BCH users have had time to prepare for the new features.
Those who hold BCH on third party systems, such as centralised exchanges, will not have to do anything, because these will have to be the ones to perform the updates. For now, it seems that all major exchanges will do so.
Those who hold BCH in their own wallets will probably have to install the updated version unless they already did so recently.
The next update is scheduled for May 2020, which is more or less the same period in which the halving of BTC will take place.
