Upgrade Tracker

• Faster Blocks proposes a one-minute block target, with corresponding changes to difficulty, issuance, and block-based timing. The proposal was revised September 5, 2026; testing, wallet compatibility, and ecosystem agreement remain part of the review.

• OP_SIGHASH would expose a transaction-signing digest to contracts, reducing duplicated hashing logic for custom signers and covenant designs. The September 8 draft uses a single SHA-256 of the signing preimage; a BCHN implementation has been submitted for review.

• Native elliptic-curve arithmetic would give contracts direct access to curve operations. The August 1 draft is an experimental benchmark: opcode allocation, costs, independent testing, and deployment remain open.

• TXv5 remains a draft with a May 2027 target. Read-only inputs and unified bytecode limits have also been discussed as changes that could be separated from the new transaction encoding; they are not a confirmed package.

• Other research includes post-quantum and hybrid signatures. Simplified Header Verification and UTXO Fastsync concern node or wallet infrastructure and do not themselves require a consensus fork.

The candidates address confirmation timing and contract capabilities. None is guaranteed inclusion: the final package may be smaller, deferred, or contain no consensus changes. A proposal's target date is not evidence of activation.