Bitcoin Cash
KLEAR3 ResearchPublished Updated
Bitcoin CashBCHBitcoin Cash split away from Bitcoin on 2017-08-01 to keep blocks large and fees low. Its official website repository took zero commits in the last ninety days; the software that actually carries the network, Bitcoin Cash Node, took 156 from 19 people over the same window, on a different repository almost no directory checks.
What does Bitcoin Cash actually do?
Bitcoin Cash is a payment ledger forked from Bitcoin to keep blocks large and fees near zero, trading some of the caution of a slow-changing chain for cheaper, faster everyday payments. It carries Bitcoin’s full history up to the split, then runs entirely on its own from there.
The fork happened because two camps wanted different answers to the same bottleneck: a block that fills up either raises fees until it empties, or has to get bigger. Bitcoin kept the limit and built a second layer on top; Bitcoin Cash raised the limit instead, from 8 MB at the split to 32 MB the following year.
Nothing about the ledger itself changed at the moment of the split: block 478,559 is identical on both chains, which is why anyone holding bitcoin at that moment automatically held the same amount of this coin too. Every block since has been its own history.
The project describes itself in three words on its own homepage, Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash, read at the source rather than paraphrased from a directory.
Source bitcoincash.org · Wikipedia, read 2026-10-07
Is the code actually open?
Yes, under MIT — but not in the repository most directories check. The one named after the project, bitcoincashorg/bitcoincash.org, is its website and has taken no commits in ninety days. The software that runs the network is a separate project, also MIT, with twenty published releases.
That website repository is a real, named, MIT-licensed GitHub project, which is exactly why a naive check stops there and reports a protocol gone quiet. It is the wrong repository for that question: it holds a marketing site, not consensus code.
The software that actually validates blocks is Bitcoin Cash Node, one of at least four independent client implementations the project's own homepage lists side by side, with no single company behind any of them. It became the dominant client after a contested split in November 2020, covered below.
Its repository carries the same MIT licence as the website, by coincidence rather than shared ownership, and publishes 20 versioned releases, full pagination read.
Source GitHub · bitcoincash.org, read 2026-10-07
No audit firm has reviewed this software, as far as we could find: no audits folder in the repository, no report from a named firm. One audit dated 2026 does exist for a node implementation, but it covers eCash, the chain that split away in November 2020 — a different project this page does not cover.
Source GitHub, read 2026-10-07
Is anyone still working on it?
On the website repository, no: zero commits in ninety days, last pushed in February. On Bitcoin Cash Node, the software that matters, yes: 156 commits from 19 distinct Git identities over the same window, the most recent the day before we read it.
That gap is the point of this page, not a footnote to it. Two repositories named after the same project can tell opposite stories, and a reader who stops at the first one gets the wrong answer about the second.
We read the node's activity through a GitHub mirror of its primary repository, hosted on GitLab, to keep the same method across every page on this site. Checked against GitLab itself the same day, the same window showed 184 commits rather than 156: the mirror lags a little, it does not lie.
Nineteen identities are a floor on the number of people, not a headcount: one contributor can sign under two names, and several can share one.
Source GitHub, read 2026-10-07
What shows it is running
- The network answers — block 971,833
- Bitcoin Cash Node is still being worked on — 156 commits over the 90 days to 2026-10-07, 19 distinct Git identities, last on 2026-10-01
Source api.bitcore.io (BitPay) · GitHub, read 2026-10-07
- The shared ledger with Bitcoin begins
- Bitcoin Cash splits away as its own chain
- Bitcoin Cash Node, the future dominant client, goes public
- A contested upgrade splits off eCash; Bitcoin Cash Node keeps the name
Where does it actually run?
On a single chain, its own, and we checked that it answers: a public node returned block 971 833 on 7 October 2026. The fragmentation here is not across networks, the way a dollar token spreads across a dozen chains; it is across the software and the community that run this one.
That distinction matters because it changes what can go wrong. USDC exists as separate contracts on dozens of chains, and sending to the wrong one loses the money. Bitcoin Cash has no wrong network to pick: every transaction settles on the one chain, whichever of the four client programs validated it.
What this chain has split over instead is who gets to decide its rules, twice: once away from Bitcoin in 2017, once again away from itself in 2020. Both splits left behind a new chain carrying its own token; neither left the remaining one running two networks at once.
Source api.bitcore.io (BitPay), read 2026-10-07
Bitcoin CashNetwork verified by reading its current block height on a public node.
What the coin actually does
It pays for block space, and the miner who adds the block keeps all of it. There is no company treasury and no team allocation, because nobody issued it; new coins appear only as a mining reward, on the same schedule Bitcoin uses, read in this project’s own code.
The schedule is identical to Bitcoin's, bit for bit: a block pays 50 coins, that reward halves every 210,000 blocks by shifting bits rather than dividing, and the series this produces adds up to 20,999,999.977 coins — short of the round number everyone repeats by 0.0231, for the same reason it is short on Bitcoin.
Fees are the other half, and in November 2020 they were the entire fight. A proposal would have redirected a share of every block reward to a development fund before it reached the miner; it was rejected by most of the network's computing power, and the client that removed it, Bitcoin Cash Node, is the one whose chain carries this name today.
Source bitcoin-cash-node/bitcoin-cash-node — src/validation.cpp · Wikipedia, read 2026-10-07
Reading the code that enforces this today shows no constraint on how a miner splits the coinbase payout, only a ceiling on its total: subsidy plus fees, nothing destroyed, nothing reserved for anyone else.
- In circulation20,099,418.647
- Not yet issued, up to the cap900,581.353
- What the token is forDirectly verified
- How many existDirectly verified
- How new ones appearDirectly verified
- Who received themDirectly verified
- Who can change the rulesDirectly verified
The KLEAR3 rating
4.4out of 5 in the KLEAR3 rating
Each axis gets 0 to 5 from the facts in the register, against thresholds written in advance. The overall score is their weighted average, and it only appears once at least 5 of the 6 axes rest on a measured fact.
- Audits ×1.3
- Open code ×1.2
- Business model ×1.1
- Token alignment ×1
- Governance ×1
- Maturity ×0.7
- Open code5
public repository · MIT licence · 20 published releases · 156 commits in 90 days
- Audits3
code reviewed in the open: 156 commits in 90 days, 6 years in production
What holds it back no report in our registry · no report opened: we do not know what they found
- Business model5
business model published by the protocol · paid by whoever sends the transaction · collected by the miner who produces the block · all of it to the miner, nothing is destroyed
- Governancenot measured
What holds it back decision mechanism not established
- Token alignment5
supply capped at 21 million · 96% already in circulation · emission schedule published · no initial allocation: every coin comes from the block reward
- Maturity4
6 years of public code · 1 network verified by us
We rate the protocol: how it is built, how much of it can be checked, how its token lines up. Never an investment. A high score is not advice to buy, and a low one is not advice to sell.
What we could not establish
Three things. We found no audit report for this software, anywhere. The circulating figure we cite is a third party’s count, not one we read on the chain ourselves. And we could not establish how much of the network’s actual computing power runs each of the four client programs.
"Dominant client" is a description we found repeated across independent accounts of the 2020 split, not a share we measured directly: nothing we could reach breaks mining power down by which of the four programs a given miner runs today.
The circulating supply of 20,099,418.647 comes from an aggregator, the same limit this page notes on Bitcoin: coins behind lost keys are still counted, and nobody can say how many that is.
Source CoinGecko, read 2026-10-07
Frequently asked questions
Why does Bitcoin Cash exist if Bitcoin already does this?
Because in 2017 part of the Bitcoin community wanted bigger blocks instead of a second layer, to keep fees low as more people used the chain directly. Rather than keep arguing inside one project, they copied its entire history and continued it under different rules.
The split happened at block 478559: everything before that height is identical on both chains, which is why holding one coin at the time handed its owner one unit of each. Every block since has written two separate histories.
The practical difference is the block size, raised from 8 MB at the split to 32 MB in 2018 — a trade of some of Bitcoin’s caution for cheaper, faster everyday transactions on the base chain itself.
Both sides still agree on what a coin is for: paying for block space, kept entirely by whoever mines it. The split is over keeping that cheap at scale, not over who it is for.
Is Bitcoin Cash development dead?
The repository GitHub lists under the project’s own name is, with zero commits in ninety days. The software that actually runs the network is not: Bitcoin Cash Node, a separate repository, took 156 commits from 19 people over the same window, the latest the day before we checked.
That first repository is the project’s public-facing website, not its consensus software — a real, easy mistake, and the kind this site exists to catch before a reader repeats it.
Checked a second way, against the primary GitLab repository rather than its GitHub mirror, the same ninety days showed 184 commits rather than 156: the number moves with the source, the conclusion does not.
Twenty published releases sit in that same software repository, the latest two days before we read it. A repository that ships releases on a rolling basis is not one anybody walked away from, whatever its namesake website implies.
What happened in the 2020 split, and who is "Bitcoin Cash" now?
A plan would have taken a slice of every mining reward, before the miner saw it, to fund development. Most of the network’s computing power rejected it, and the client that removed that rule, Bitcoin Cash Node, kept both the network’s hashpower and the name Bitcoin Cash.
The side that lost, Bitcoin ABC, carried its proposal onto a chain of its own instead; that chain later renamed itself eCash, and the two have been separate projects, with separate audits and separate repositories, ever since.
Nothing about that fight changed how fees work today: the code enforces a ceiling on what a coinbase transaction can pay out, not a floor reserved for anyone, so the rejected cut simply never left the miner’s payout.
It was the second time this ledger’s rules were settled by a vote of computing power rather than a company decision; the first was the split from Bitcoin itself, three years earlier.
Where to read on, at the source — every address answered 200 on 2026-10-07.
Read next: our Ethereum profile covers another chain with no single official client, and our BNB profile shows a chain forked from that same client yet tied to the one exchange that launched it — the opposite of this page's four competing, company-free implementations.
Ask an assistant to summarise it and check what it claims.