Bitcoin Cash in 2026 is NOT the BCH you remember from 2017.
You think it's just about the block size? That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Every year since the chain split, BCH has thoughtfully delivered upgrades that unlock the full potential of Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
Early BCH (ABC era):
2017: Preserve "Vanilla" Bitcoin (No SegWit!)
2018: 32mb max blocksize, OP_CAT, OP_CHECKDATASIG (first Script restoration)
2019: Schnorr signatures
2020: ASERT Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm
Despite two additional chain splits in 2018 and 2020, BCH managed to survive.
Learning from each fork, the community implemented the "CHIP" process for consensus building, allowing future upgrades to be determined by a decentralized decision framework.
CHIP Era:
2021: Unlimited unconfirmed transaction chains, CHIP process introduced
2022: Native Introspection, 64-bit math
2023: CashTokens (miner-validated tokens, consensus-enforced commitments, and state-carrier UTXOs)
The upgrades delivered in the CHIP era were informed by real-world needs as businesses experimented with viable DeFi products built using Bitcoin Script (aka CashAssembly).
CHIP allowed all stakeholders to transparently and vigorously research future protocol upgrades.
The 2023 CashTokens upgrade was the culmination of many years of accumulated prior art and debate - and is often referred to as "the BCH comeback."
CashTokens era (birth of BCH DeFi):
2024: Adjustable Blocksize Limit Algorithm (aka "Jessica ABLA")
2025: Virtual Machine Limits & [BigInt] Arithmetic (VMLA or "Velma", aka Great Script Restoration)
The 2024 and 2025 upgrades mark a renaissance in BCH culture and development, driven by optimism around CashTokens and a desire to permanently address the most major remaining scalability issues.
ABLA fairly calculates the blocksize growth rate in a way that doesn't affect the economics of the network.
VMLA fairly calculates the computational cost of each transaction such that we can safely unlock the full power of Bitcoin Script.
Quantum Bitcoin era:
2026: "Layla": Loops, Functions, Bitwise operators
With the Velma upgrade activated, we can now allow full Turing-completeness for CashAssembly, allowing any program to be executed on the BCH blockchain as long as its computational cost does not exceed the budget allowed by VMLA (and the appropriate fee is paid).
This marks the beginning of the "Quantum Bitcoin" era because we are now able to implement quantum-resistant signature verification directly in CashAssembly without needing any additional protocol upgrades.
This would also mark the beginning of a "Privacy Bitcoin" era as we can similarly implement ZK-SNARK verification directly in CashAssembly.
The Layla upgrade is already locked in on the BCH Chipnet, and is scheduled for deployment on mainnet this upcoming May.
Are you ready to see what Bitcoin can really do? :)