The Bitcoin Cash network processed more than two million transactions for low fees during the community-driven stress test held on September 1.
Users have bombarded the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network with transactions after transactions as part of the cryptocurrency’s stress test. Held for 24 hours starting September 1, the test aims to demonstrate the capability and scalability of Bitcoin Cash.
The community-driven stress test failed to reach its target of five million transactions made during the day. In fact, some tracking websites reported only over 2.1 million transactions on the altcoin’s network. Nevertheless, that number represents almost 65 percent of the total transactions made on the market on September 1.
The number of microtransactions on a Bitcoin Cash block peaked at 14,300 during the test, about 13,000 more than the average number of microtransactions on a Bitcoin block. Moreover, the Bitcoin Cash network processed 23.8 transactions per second. For comparison, Bitcoin averaged only 2.51 transactions per second at the same time.
Meanwhile, the fees required by the network remained low during the test. Trackers reported that the median transactions fees remained only below US$0.001 per transaction.
Many important figures in both Bitcoin Cash and crypto communities have expressed their delight in the previously concluded test. According to Bitcoin Cash advocate Roger Ver, the numbers produced by the altcoin during the test surpassed those of Bitcoin’s.
Ver, CEO of Bitcoin.com, said:
“Last year BTC could only process a single transaction for $50. Today BCH is processing 35,000 transactions for $50… In the last 24 hours Bitcoin Cash had more transactions than all other cryptocurrencies combined.”
Calvin Ayre of Bitcoin Cash mining pool CoinGeek explained that the statistics during the test day proved that the altcoin scales on a chain. Bitcoin Cash advocated for on-chain scaling compared to Bitcoin’s off chain solution.
There Are Doubts
While most Bitcoin Cash enthusiasts are satisfied with the results of the stress test, a number of experts and analysts have shared their doubts online.
Many services went down during the test, most notable of them being crypto payment service BitPay. Cointext CTO Vin Armani called the service outage as a denial of service (DoS) attack by the Bitcoin Cash community on BitPay. Armani added that the outages could discourage others, including the Bitcoin Cash-leaning BitPay, to build on the altcoin’s network.
Meanwhile, Statoshi.info creator Jameson Lopp pointed out that the average block size mined during the test corresponded to only around 11 percent of Bitcoin Cash’s maximum size of 32 MB. Most observers argued that the plan to increase the maximum block size to 128 MB might be unnecessary if blocks could not reach the current limit.
He also shared that 16 percent of Bitcoin ABC nodes went out of the network during the test. Bitcoin ABC is the clear dominant full node implementation on the Bitcoin Cash network.
Bitcoin Cash increased by a billion US dollars in total valuation after the stress test. The altcoin is currently the fourth largest crypto on the market with over US$10.9 billion worth in circulation.
At the winding hours of September 1, the price of Bitcoin Cash spiked from US$559.40 to US$628.08. The altcoin is currently trading at US$629.47 against the US dollar.
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