what is the bch Velma upgrade the Bitcoin cash protocol upgrades each year with new and Powerful technology in 2024 the Jessica upgrade activated the abler algorithm to automatically adjust bch block sizes in response to network demand this year in 2025 the upgrade is called Velma from the starting letters of virtual machine limits Velma goes live on mainnet on the 15th of May 2025 celebrated with the second annual Bliss conference in lublana Slovenia however eager developers can begin experimenting with its potential on the development chip net today the Velma upgrade combines two Community agreed cash Improvement
proposals or chips chip 20215 VM limits targeted virtual machine limits and Chip 2024 47 big int High Precision arithmetic both chips were proposed and championed by Jason dner the same developer behind the 2023 cash tokens upgrade the first chip retargets the virtual machine limits in Bitcoin cash full nodes VM limits control how large and complicated a Bitcoin cash transaction can be before it is rejected as invalid by the network if the limits are too strict smart contract developers are limited in the ease and power of applications they can build if the limits are too loose
the chain becomes vulnerable to attacks by malicious actors submitting unnecessarily complicated transactions designed to crash nodes and disrupt the network the existing bch VM limits were set in 2010 by Satoshi Nakamoto himself who hurriedly rushed them in once he realized unlimited scripts were an attack Vector before out of the Bitcoin Community shortly after those limits have not been revised any time in the last 15 years so there is significant room for improvement the changes to the limits are designed to loosen the constraints on benevolent smart contract developers without creating any extra room for malicious actors
the specific changes are the previous 2011 op code limit has been removed the previous 520 BYT stack element size has been raised to 10,000 by three new limits for operation spending hashing and control stack usage have been added a sophisticated test Suite has been built to test multiple node implementations against these limits to ensure their safety the second chip assists the first by removing one additional pre-existing limit on the size of numbers before Velma numbers in bch were capped at 64-bit integers I.E mathematical operat ations could only calculate up to 2^ of 64 after Velma
numbers and calculations can be any size provided they fit within the other adjusted limits this change to numbers is a surprisingly big deal it improves the ability for developers to build dii protocols greatly increases access to privacy and zero knowledge related cryptography and greatly increases access to Quantum resistant cryptography between these two chips is significantly upgrading the smart contract power available to bitcoin Builders no issues are expected but if any are discovered they can of course be addressed with a follow-up chip as with most bch upgrades end users and bch holders do not need to
take any action to benefit sit back and enjoy the more powerful apps that emerge from upgraded infrastructure and developer tools and that's Velma build on the Bitcoin cash virtual machine with plenty of Freedom or jump in and try out the thriving ecosystem of products and services it has facilitated
