Bitcoin developers announced in a new BIP today that there would be a ban on all non-essential transactions on the Bitcoin network between the hours of 5pm and 5am, beginning June 21st. Transactions that are made during this time will be rejected from the mempool.
“We don’t want anyone paying bills, buying groceries, or anything like that. If you’re not moving $1,000,000 or more, your transaction is non-essential. Just use a credit card or Strike,” wrote Luke Dashjr in a tweet.
The curfew is being put in place as a preventive measure to stop a mempool backlog or rising transaction fees before they even happen. In previous years, this has been devastating for Bitcoin usability, but developers are optimistic the curfew will stop this.
Microstrategy, a company that recently reversed years of falling profit by buying Bitcoin, released a detailed guide for corporations and government to understand this curfew.
“While transaction volume is spreading at a fast rate, the disease does not seem to be as severe as in the past. Most cases we see are transactions in the several hundreds of dollars. We aren’t seeing people use it in daily commerce. Still, nonessential activity can harm the network and this curfew should help us flatten this curve before it gets out of hand.”
Asked whether they planned to implement this curfew on their own chains, Bitcoin SV developers said it wasn’t relevant because “nobody uses Bitcoin SV anyways.”
