[2017-12-20] The Bitcoin Cash Community Prepares for ‘Change the Address Day’

[moriskarlov]

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) community, developers, and businesses that support the decentralized currency are preparing for “Change the Address Day” scheduled for January 14. At that time the BCH network and its participants will upgrade the protocol’s address format to one proposed by Bitcoin ABC developer Amaury Séchet.

Bitcoin Cash Plans to Upgrade Its Address Format on January 14, 2018

This past November news.Bitcoin.com reported on the lead developer of Bitcoin ABC, Amaury Séchet, proposing to change the address format in the bitcoin cash protocol. The new format will be based on the ‘bech32’ codebase and will prevent bitcoin cash from being sent to bitcoin core (BTC) addresses after the upgrade. In addition to that specific benefit the address format called the “Cashaddr format” will also provide enhancements for new protocol features.

Deploying an Address Change Takes Time for BCH Participants to Upgrade

For instance, the new address format could progress the concept of Zero Knowledge Proofs being added to the BCH network. Further, Cashaddr format will provide a strong checksum that will offer better efficiency, and the new format will also improve QR coding as well. Amaury Séchet has said that the proposed format will also allow developers to “deploy a more secure way of doing multi-party smart contracts in the future.” Séchet had stated during his proposal that changing the address was “pressing” due to people mistakenly sending BCH to BTC addresses or vice-versa.  

“In order to reduce confusion for users with the use of different addresses, I think it is important to deploy this shortly and stop the fragmentation of the ecosystem,” explains Séchet on the developer mailing list.

"Deploying such a change on the network will take some time for all the wallets, exchanges and merchants to upgrade."

Full article - https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-cash-community-prepares-for-change-the-address-day/

[Kprawn]

I thought the " people mistakenly sending BCH to BTC addresses or vice-versa " was done on purpose to create some

confusion. It will become even a bigger problem now that ConBase and Blockchain.info started to support it. This kind of thing

happens when you rush the coding and deployment of a new coin/project. 

[Karakyli]

Very good, necessary and timely improvement of the network in cash. Really. sending this coin to the BTC and vice versa sometimes took place because of the similarity of the name and symbols and caused some confusion. Bitkoyn cash has already reached the rate of about $ 3,000, and given the good efforts of its developers' team to improve it, it has good prospects for growth.

[Coin-Keeper]

I have to admit I am watching these.  Remember we have BCH coins equal to the number of BTC coins we had when the fork happened.  I don't know where these are headed but for now they are ~ $3700.00 per coin (give or take).  Its an absolute bonus for BTC holders on the "chain" before the fork.  For old timers that could be a windfall.

[Crypington]

So what does this mean to holders?  Are we supposed to download a new wallet and transfer our coins there?