The Bitcoin ABC 2020-2022 Strategy & Roadmap
The goal of Bitcoin ABC is to build the software infrastructure needed for Bitcoin Cash to be successful as world-scale sound money. We are “building the roads” for Bitcoin Cash. We are building the platform for potentially tens of thousands of new Bitcoin Cash businesses as we scale Bitcoin Cash to billions of daily users.
With this goal in mind, we have developed a long-term strategy in order to get to that destination. There are many challenges along the way, and competitors that need to be outrun. The steps outlined here give us a fighting chance to best the competition, and let BCH achieve its potential.
Principles
The Bitcoin ABC strategy revolves around the following principles:
long-term sustainable infrastructure, not showy short-term projects or big announcements that lack substance;
focusing efforts on building reliable foundations for the future, as opposed to optimizing components that will just have to be changed again later, thus minimizing technical debt;
serving the needs of users, miners and merchants;
continuous technical improvement;
that reality is constantly changing and we must change with it;
paying off the technical debt incurred in the early days of Bitcoin development by moving away from fragile code towards greater security and reliability; and
the goal of a maintainable codebase.
Bitcoin Cash is fundamentally sound. Bitcoin ABC aims to keep it that way. To become a solid base for application development and innovation by Bitcoin Cash businesses, Bitcoin Cash needs to continuously improve and compete.
Roadmap
This Bitcoin ABC 2020 business plan covers the one-year (1 year) period from 1 May 2020 to 30 Apr 2021 inclusive and focuses on the following development projects.
While we have already raised part of our 2020-2021 budget, Bitcoin ABC still requires funding of USD$2 million to meet the following roadmap goals.
For your reference, the high-level Bitcoin Cash Roadmap is available at BitcoinCash.org/roadmap.html.
$1.2m: Continued Progress
Funding of between USD$1.2 million and $2 million will enable Bitcoin ABC to not just continue basic operations but also make some significant improvements.
Fractional Satoshis. This is the ability to specify amounts more precise than 1 satoshi. The status quo is that when the market price of BCH rises, so will inevitably the transaction fees. With fractional satoshis, we can keep transaction fees low indefinitely.
Adaptive Block Size. This is the ability to grow the block size based on market demand up to 1TB from the current 32MB. This will permit Bitcoin Cash transactions per second to grow in a flexible and market-based adaptive manner.
Redundant Coding Capability. We need to have multiple programmers on the team who have a deep understanding of the codebase, and can quickly debug problems.
DevOps. This includes basic devops (with some capability redundancy to fix unexpected bugs), miner support, fixing chain problems in real time, etc. Improved DevOps is “capital building” in the sense that it improves the project’s future ability to develop code more rapidly and reliably in the future.
Code Quality. Continuously improving the quality of the codebase through bug fixes, catching up on security-critical Bitcoin Core backports, and low-hanging-fruit consensus changes (for example, sigops counting). These improvements reduce the likelihood of bugs, make it easier to maintain the code over time, and eases the onboarding of new developers.
$2m: Breaking Ranks with Bitcoin Core for the P2P Electronic Cash Vision
With funding of USD$2 million, Bitcoin ABC will take important steps forward that are required to establish the technical foundation required for the P2P electronic cash vision and the Bitcoin Cash roadmap.
This includes forging our own path away from Bitcoin Cash’s current dependency on Bitcoin Core backports, a dependency which in technical terms keeps us subservient to the digital gold narrative and preserves unchallenged Bitcoin Core’s market dominance.
Mempool Overhaul. This includes high-priority non-consensus improvements, primarily re-working the mempool code paths. This is a large and important project that will provide multiple basic improvements to Bitcoin Cash, including the following. See a forthcoming article for more information.
dramatically improve or completely eliminate the 50-unconfirmed chain transaction limit
reintroduction of “free” transactions
better scalability via parallelizations, block template construction, etc.
improve the fee structure
many efficiency improvements
simpler, more maintainable code
Take Code Ownership. We should not be constrained to following Bitcoin Core in most areas. Bitcoin Cash’s vision of P2P electronic cash for the world requires different technical decisions. But taking code ownership also implies greater ongoing costs for Bitcoin ABC. See a forthcoming article for more information.
Fix Block Time Oscillations: We will take steps to reduce the variations in block times and ensure blocks happen on a more regular schedule. See a forthcoming article for more information.
Faster Block Propagation: We’ll use Graphene or another solution to achieve faster block propagation times, which will benefit from our work on CTOR. Faster block propagation means more consistent profits for miners and lower risk for all network participants.
Staff Redundancy. Otherwise known as “Amaury-redundancy”, we will have on staff 1-2 developers capable enough to take over from Amaury if and when needed.
Staffing Stability. With more developers, we will be able to provide emergency technical support with devs on call for urgent problems.
Join us in building censorship-resistant P2P electronic cash for billions of daily users and realizing the vision that is Bitcoin Cash!
Visit fund.bitcoinabc.org to find our business plan, budget, delivery timeline, funding options and feedback mechanisms.
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