Bitcoin Cash continues its mission to provide fast, affordable, and scalable peer-to-peer payments. A network upgrade scheduled for May 2026 will double the usability of blockchain.
Bitcoin Cash to power on-chain innovation with 4 new CHIPs in 2026 network upgrade
Bitcoin.com’s mission is to make financial freedom accessible to everyone. Bitcoin Cash focuses on scaling with larger block sizes, allowing the network to process more transactions directly on-chain. This design keeps fees low and makes it practical for everyday payments.
By prioritizing efficient on-chain scaling, Bitcoin Cash represents an alternative approach to blockchain growth that emphasizes ease of use, accessibility, and predictable costs. This model ensures that the network remains open and affordable to everyone as global adoption increases.
As a company building wallets on top of Bitcoin Cash, we welcome CHIP’s proposed network upgrade in May 2026. This milestone strengthens the foundation for developers to create new on-chain products, expanding what they can build while maintaining network simplicity and efficiency.
The May 2026 Bitcoin Cash network upgrade introduces four major proposals that extend the scriptability and programmability capabilities of BCH while maintaining its efficiency and reliability.
- CHIP-2021-05: Loops (bounded loop operations) Two new virtual machine operations, OP_BEGIN and OP_UNTIL, have been added to allow developers to build loops within BCH contracts without increasing processing or memory demands.
- CHIP-2024-12: Payment to script (P2S) Make Pay to Script output standard on the network. It also increases the allowed length of token commitments and standard unlock bytecodes.
- CHIP-2025-05: Functions (function definition and call operations) Introduces the OP_DEFINE and OP_INVOKE opcodes. This allows Bitcoin Cash bytecode to be organized into reusable functions.
- CHIP-2025-05: Bitwise (re-enable bitwise operations) We restore critical bit-wise operations to the Bitcoin Cash scripting system, allowing financial and crypto applications to be more efficiently implemented on-chain.
These upgrades represent another step in Bitcoin Cash’s steady technological growth. These give developers greater flexibility and power to build meaningful user-centric innovations that advance peer-to-peer funding.
The May 2026 upgrade reflects the continued technological evolution of Bitcoin Cash. We continue to improve our scripting environment, improve on-chain efficiency, and expand the possibilities of decentralized applications and services. Bitcoin.com remains committed to supporting the development and maintenance of technology that promotes open, scalable, and accessible financial infrastructure.
Written by Andreas Larsson, Director of Engineering, Bitcoin.com
