Monster 369MB Block Processed on Bitcoin SV

Blockchain service provider TAAL has processed the largest block to date on Bitcoin SV — 369MB in size and containing 1.3 million transactions.

TAAL announced the milestone on Twitter. The block is an order of magnitude larger than anything currently achievable on Bitcoin (BTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Jerry Chan, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of TAAL, said the transactions were primarily processed by users of an application out of China, who competed with each other to see who could create the most transactions in a contest designed to test the transaction capabilities of the network.

It follows hot on the heels of a block with 1.1M transactions processed on May 13. 

Development focused

According to Chan, though groups like TAAL do engage in mining, their focus is on transaction processing to develop the infrastructure needed for the BSV network to thrive. 

“We want to encourage more generation of transactions… so we’re going more for transaction volume and not the number of blocks necessarily,” the CEO said. He argued that Bitcoin has an artificial block size limit and eventually would “get to the point where there will be no more blocks produced.”

“We’re happy to cue up as many transactions as we need until it’s worth it to print it into a block,” Chan added. 

Chan anticipates spikes in transaction volume from time to time, when processors can hold them “until it’s worthwhile putting them in one big block.” Unlike the BTC network, BSV can continue without significant congestion at such high volume, he said. 

The percentage of miner revenue coming from fees is currently low for BSV. According to crypto analytics site Messari, the transaction fees for BSV on May 19 were just $271 while BTC’s were valued at $960,928. 

The minimum fee rate on the open BSV network is 0.5 satoshis/byte, with the possibility of negotiating for an even cheaper rate.

Completing more BSV blocks than BTC?

Cointelegraph has reported some crypto miners might be shifting back from the BTC network to coins like BSV and BCH following the halving. BSV’s hash rate grew from 1.1 EH/s pre-halving to 2.15 EH/s on May 16, when the 1.3M-transaction BSV block was mined.