BSV Blockchain - Networks

CAIP-2

For context, see the CAIP-2 specification.

Introduction

The BSV Chain ID is a human-readable identifier for a BSV network. It is the network name a BSV node and its client tooling use to describe the chain they operate on — not the genesis block hash, which BSV shares with BTC and BCH.

Specification

Semantics

BSV networks are identified by a stable, well-known network name. This namespace registers the networks in general use for production and public/private scaling tests. Classic mainnet and testnet remain the baseline networks; Teranode Test Net (ttn) and Teranode Scaling Test Net (tstn) identify the Teranode-era scaling test networks. Local-only environments such as regtest/mockchain are out of scope for this registration.

Syntax

The Chain ID consists of the prefix bsv: followed by the network name.

The reference is a case-sensitive string matching the CAIP-2 reference grammar [-_a-zA-Z0-9]{1,32}. This namespace defines four references:

• mainnet — the BSV main network
• testnet — the BSV public test network
• ttn — Teranode Test Net (public Teranode scaling test network; also known as Teratestnet)
• tstn — Teranode Scaling Test Net (private, per-deployment Teranode scaling test network)

A validating regular expression for the fully-qualified Chain ID:

bsv:(mainnet|testnet|ttn|tstn)

Resolution Mechanics

To resolve the network name for a BSV node, send a JSON-RPC getblockchaininfo request; the chain field of the result identifies the network. Map the node’s chain value to the CAIP-2 reference as follows where applicable: main → mainnet, test → testnet. Teranode deployments that self-identify as ttn or tstn map to those references unchanged.

// Request
{
  "jsonrpc": "1.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "getblockchaininfo",
  "params": []
}

// Response (abridged)
{
  "result": {
    "chain": "main"
  }
}

Application-layer clients typically resolve the network without a node round-trip: a BRC-100 wallet returns the network directly from its getNetwork call (e.g. { "network": "mainnet" } or { "network": "testnet" }), which maps to the CAIP-2 reference for mainnet/testnet. Wallets and services that operate on Teranode test networks SHOULD report ttn or tstn so the CAIP-2 reference matches the application-layer identifier without translation.

Rationale

BSV descends from the original Bitcoin protocol and therefore shares Satoshi’s genesis block with BTC and BCH. The bip122 namespace addresses this by referencing the hash of a chain’s first post-fork block (as it does for Bitcoin Cash), so a BSV entry under bip122 is technically possible. This namespace instead uses the network name because that is the identifier BSV’s wallet and infrastructure layer already exchanges — see the namespace README for the full rationale. This mirrors the casper namespace, which likewise uses a human-readable Chain ID distinct from the genesis hash.

ttn and tstn are registered now so payment and cross-chain tooling (e.g. x402) can target Teranode test environments without overloading bsv:testnet or inventing ad-hoc identifiers that later need migration.

Backwards Compatibility

No prior CAIP or namespace assigns BSV identifiers, so there are no legacy identifiers to maintain. Tooling that prefers a hash-based identifier can independently register BSV under bip122 using its fork-block hash; the two schemes can coexist without collision because they occupy different namespaces. Clients MUST NOT treat a bip122 identifier that only names the shared genesis block as a BSV network — that reference is ambiguous across the BTC/BCH/BSV split.

Test Cases

This is a list of manually composed examples:

# BSV Mainnet
bsv:mainnet

# BSV Testnet
bsv:testnet

# BSV Teranode Test Net (Teratestnet)
bsv:ttn

# BSV Teranode Scaling Test Net
bsv:tstn

References

• BRC-100 - the BSV wallet-to-application interface, whose getNetwork method reports the network name
• bip122 - the CAIP-2 namespace for Bitcoin-based networks, which identifies forks by fork-block hash
• casper - a CAIP-2 namespace precedent using a human-readable Chain ID rather than a genesis hash
• README - the BSV namespace README with the full rationale

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

Citation

Please cite this document as:

Deggen (@sirdeggen), "namespaces/bsv-caip2: BSV Blockchain - Networks [DRAFT]," Chain Agnostic Namespaces, bsv-caip2, July 2026 / . [Online serial]. Available: https://github.com/ChainAgnostic/namespaces/bsv-caip2.md