CHIP Endorsement May 2026
The Bitcoin Cash Podcast is adding its support & approval for all 4 of the Jason Dreyzehner proposed CHIPs to lock-in November 15 2025 & go live May 15 2026 as the "Layla" upgrade. I will also be advocating as such regarding my involvement internally in Selene, BLISS & BLAZE and don't anticipate any difficulties there, but this statement is not on behalf of those entities.
- ✅ CHIP-2021-05 Loops: Bounded Looping Operations Github commit hash: bd3ebc76bfa2190255fd3b5fcd84ec8910652f4e
- ✅ CHIP-2024-12 P2S: Pay to Script Github commit hash: c144f03fe11b6de0e924b2285b355370d0e658b8
- ✅ CHIP-2025-05 Bitwise: Re-Enable Bitwise Operations Github commit hash: a432a19bcbc597391d0f0a29ae62a902b575d1dd
- ✅ CHIP-2025-05 Functions: Function Definition and Invocation Operations Github commit hash: 26e22566a18f2f3b542ff46a70d258d5da585cd8
Note: Functions CHIP is the unaltered version, not the "Take 2" or "Take 3" proposals.
As discussed on The Bitcoin Cash Podcast Episode 157, community polling indicates a high appetite for protocol innovation & upgrades - presumably built on the confidence of previous upgrade quality & results. It is very noticeable how the CashTokens upgrade in 2023 is living up to expectations in late 2025. There has been no problems really to speak of & impressive traction/uptake of CashTokens technology. I have a biased favourite project in the BLISS NFT ticket collections, but the success of CashTokens is widespread and compelling. One excellent recent example, congratulations to the Riften Labs team on recently passing $1M USD TVL on Cauldron! The mounting success of the CashTokens ecosystem speaks to the quality of both research & implementation of BCH upgrades and the community's ability to make powerful investments in those upgrades without expecting instant gratification. The trend is set to continue in 2026.
Loops, Functions & Bitwise operations are all standard issue features of essentially every programming language ever so I'm glad to see the BCH VM catching up to that standard. Loops demonstrates that yet again the BCH community is able to bypass propaganda & misunderstandings ("Bitcoin VM has no loops") in a way that other cryptocurrency communities severely struggle to. I was also impressed by the community debate that produced the final products (including iterating Functions from OP_EVAL, different function variations & the removal of lowering base-instruction cost). It is critical for the CHIP process & the work produced to be evaluated & critiqued without contention becoming unresolvable.
I would also like to note I see an underrated value in the P2S CHIP specifically - moving P2S from non-standard relay policy to standard. Especially given the current drama in BTC over policy/consensus gap exploitation (aka "Node wars" between "Knots/filters" vs "Core/spammers"), I see a strong opportunity for BCH to once against front-run potential problems by a research effort (& possibly CHIP) to unify policy/consensus where appropriate or document the status/reasoning and reflect on alternative solutions where not. For instance, perhaps an ABLA/DAA style approach - either by consensus or policy - could be used for minimum fee rates? Needs investigation. BitcoinCashAutist (notable CHIP contributor) also mentioned this in his 2026 CHIP endorsement. I encourage readers interested in this initiative to read or contribute to my Bitcoin Cash Research thread about this topic of non-standard transactions.
In any case, the four endorsed CHIPs combined make a very powerful upgrade. I'm thrilled to see BCH making bold strides forward to accelerate our growing momentum & industry-leading presence in UTXO DeFi. I am also glad to be a part of the momentum around endorsements (my own endorsement in 2024 was not published until late October) & developer tooling/education (sign up to BCH BLAZE!).
There is also great stuff on the horizon with the 1 minute blocks proposal continuing to be discussed. I would love to see UTXO Commitments start to be focussed on in more detail & the relay policy ideas mentioned above but that's simply my wishful thinking - as always, a /someone problem!
Finally, a big thank you to Jason Dreyzehner for his tireless work on these proposals & anyone who has been involved in feedback, review, implementation, testing or assistance of any kind. It's a team effort and testament to a decentralised community but Jason also deserves specific recognition for his ceaseless effort here. Delivering two enormous upgrades back-to-back is an effort that will resonate through BCH history in perpetuity.
Layla follows CashTokens & Velma in bringing BCH to the forefront of cryptocurrency scriptability and will draw in ever more interested parties as a result. I'm enthused & anticipating activation already!
Jeremy
