Bitcoin Core Activates CSV Soft Fork

Bitcoin Core developers have announced they activated CSV soft fork, which incluides BIP68, BIP113, and BIP112.

The first block to feature the soft fork is numbered #419328 as announced in Bitcoin Core’s official Twitter.

CSV soft fork (BIP 68,112 & 113) activated on block #419328 https://t.co/IYYeSfkUAd

— Bitcoin Core Project (@bitcoincoreorg) July 4, 2016

BIP68 allows miners to set transaction processing time. In other words, miners won’t be able to start processing a transaction before a certain time. This addition will also enable two-direction channels for HTLC (Hashed Timelock Contracts).

One of HTLC’s possible real-life applications is integration of minute-wise payments for streamed videos. A user may refuse to watch the entire video and pay only for the part that he or she had actually watched.

In that case, the payment will be effected automatically via a two-direction channel, where a particular amount of bitcoins had been ‘frozen’ in advance.

BIP113 relates to including temporarily frozen transactions into a block, while BIP112 is required for implementation of long-expected Lightning Network.