It has become evident good things are happening in the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. We see more transactions than ever before. Although this may be s spam attack, the network handles things relatively well. However, Antpool noticed now is a good time to start increasing their block size. Whereas the pool mined 2MB blocks, they have now shifted to twice that block size. An interesting step forward, which may indicate 8MB blocks are a possibility in the near future. A lot has changed for Bitcoin Cash over the past few months. Some people doubted this altcoin would stick around long enough to see January 1st of 2018. Contrary to those expectations, BCH has done remarkably well. The value is holding steady, the network grows, and more services want to support BCH. Additionally, we also see an increase in network transactions over the past few weeks. This increase also brings some minor complications with it, but nothing that can’t be solved. AntPool Increases its Bitcoin Cash Block SizeEven though BCH allows for 8MB blocks, not all mining pools use this limit to the fullest. In fact, most of them don’t, as it would tax their infrastructure. Until there is a demand for the maximum size, mining pools will maintain smaller sizes. Antpool, for example, has stuck to 2MB blocks for some time now. BTC.com was seemingly stuck on 1MB, but some of their nodes are shifting to a bigger size. It is evident something will need to change in this regard before things get out of hand. Antpool is leading this charge as we speak. The popular mining pool increased their “default” BCH block size to 4MB. Although only a few blocks were found so far, things will get very interesting moving forward. More block capacity will eventually mean less mempool problems like this weekend. Even those problems were cleared up pretty quickly, though. The public interest in Bitcoin Cash appears to be growing at a steady rate. Right now, it is superior to Bitcoin in terms of transaction processing capacity. It will be interesting to see if other BCH pools increase their native block size as well. It seems to be a good time to warrant such a change as we speak. Changing to 4MB as the network’s default size would certainly make things a lot easier. It’s evident Antpool may even switch to 8MB in the very near future. This recent increase appears to be a “test”. After all, the company needs to make sure their infrastructure doesn’t get clogged up due to these larger blocks. An interesting situation well worth keeping an eye on in the future. Antpool Ups the Native BCH Block Size to 4MB, Upgrade to 8MB may Follow Soon was last modified: January 15th, 2018 by JP Buntinx