With just days left there are a few things BCH holders and full node operators should know before the upgrade takes place this coming Tuesday.

Just a Few Days Left Until the May 15th Bitcoin Cash Upgrade

The Bitcoin Cash network is about to perform the largest block size increase ever as the upgrade will expand the block size by 4X on May 15, 2018. The development team has also added 'Satoshi OP_Codes,' and the fork will also increase the protocol's default data-carrier-size to 220 bytes. Unless you run a BCH full nodeimplementation there is not much a common user needs to do.

The Hard Fork Activation Will Use the Median Time Past Method

The BCH fork on May 15 will be similar to the fork activations that took place on August 1, and the DAA fork that took place this past November. This means the activation will take place on May 15, but there won't be specific block height, because the upgrade will activate based on 'Median Time Past' (MTP). The initiation of the hard fork will begin on Tuesday, May 15 at 12:00:00 UTC, 2018, but the upgrade will not be implemented until the MTP timestamp and the processing of 11 blocks equal to or greater than 1,526,400,000 takes place. Following this period after the next block, the 32MB upgrade will be live on the BCH network.

Full Node Clients and Miners Must Update Software

Full node operators need to upgrade their Bitcoin Cash clients as soon as possible, before the fork begins. ABC users can download the latest Bitcoin ABC 0.17.1 version here, and those operating other full nodes like Bitcoin Unlimited, or XT should upgrade to the client that supports the 32MB increase. At the moment looking at datafor the most dominant BCH client, Bitcoin ABC, it shows a great majority of nodes have already upgraded to the latest 0.17.1 ABC version. Full node operators and miners are required to upgrade their software in order to participate during and after the network change.