This Startup's Upgrade Code Can Be Used by Any Bitcoin-Based Blockchain

A small blockchain company out of Arizona has built open-source software that it says any bitcoin-based blockchain could use to improve its functionality.

Nexus announced Monday what it called its seventh "Activation" - a protocol upgrade that brings smart-contract functionality to the Nexus blockchain, which launched as a fork of the original bitcoin protocol in 2014.

"Part of the intention was to use the original bitcoin code from the 2014 era to upgrade that into our framework," Nexus founder Colin Cantrell told CoinDesk.

"Any blockchain that uses the legacy UTXO can actually upgrade smart contracts over their live blockchain without having to do a chain reset or anything like that."

UTXO stands for "Unspent transaction output" but it's also become a shorthand for blockchains based on bitcoin.

"All the bitcoin forks could essentially upgrade and potentially utilize it," Cantrell said of his company's latest release.

Cantrell said it started as a basic bitcoin fork, but Nexus has had several activations since it went live.

Nexus uses a variety of strategies to achieve higher throughput, including sharding and proof-of-stake, but it also uses something familiar in basic computing but less discussed in the blockchain industry.

At a tech event in Arizona, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak announced a partnership with Nexus on a new education initiative that will be built on the Nexus blockchain.

Nexus founder Colin Cantrell with advisor Dino Farinacci, image via Nexus.