Overview
- Matt Corallo told reporters he sees roughly an 80% chance BIP-54 will be Bitcoin’s next soft fork, a view first reported in coverage published on Nov. 4 and Nov. 5.
- BIP-54, known as the Great Consensus Cleanup, proposes specific fixes for four legacy flaws: poison blocks that slow validation, time‑warp abuse of difficulty adjustments, Merkle‑malleability for 64‑byte transactions, and duplicate coinbase transaction risks.
- Development work has progressed: test vectors were merged into the BIPs repository, Signet sandbox testing began in early 2026, and some pools including MARA Pool and ViaBTC are already producing coinbase transactions compatible with BIP-54 on mainnet.
- There is no activation date; TABconf attendees and developers estimate a realistic earliest window in 2027 with most expecting 2028 or later, and key social coordination over activation mechanics remains the main barrier.
- Critics call the plan maintenance rather than innovation, and analysts say the cleanup is unlikely to move markets but could provide a repeatable activation playbook for future, more substantive upgrades.