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Plans to launch Bitcoin SegWit2X fork suspended

Later this month Bitcoin was expected to undergo a hard fork with a view to increasing the block size in the blockchain that drives the cryptocurrency.

The fork was known as SegWit2X and the folks organising the fork have called it off for now.

One of the leaders in the drive to increase the size of Bitcoin’s underlying blocks was chief executive officer of Bitcoin wallet software firm, BitGo Mike Belshe who says the decision to suspend the fork was made due to a lack of consensus from the community.

“Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin. Although we
strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we
believe is even more important: keeping the community together,” wrote Belshe in an email.

Why were Belshe and others trying to increase the blockchain size? Simply put – cost savings.

As Bitcoin has risen in popularity the network has become somewhat overcrowded and transaction fees are presently tipping the scales at over $6 according to The Register. The SegWit2X fork would have increased the block size from 1MB to 2MB to allow Bitcoin to scale more effectively.

The trouble is that this fork would change how Bitcoin transaction data is stored and would mean that the new code would be incompatible with the old code. This is why the community needed to reach a consensus.

“As fees rise on the blockchain, we believe it will eventually become
obvious that on-chain capacity increases are necessary. When that happens, we hope the community will come together and find a solution, possibly with a blocksize increase,” added Belshe.

So for now at least nothing changes but we think this is a great example of what Bitcoin is capable of. Had this been say a bank trying to change how it parses transactions we the customers would never have a say but Bitcoin has really shown us how we the community of users actually have a say in how our transactions are handled.

On the news of the suspension of SegWit2X Bitcoin’s price climbed to $7 800 (yet another all-time high for this year) before sliding down a few hundred dollars.

[Source – The Register] [Image – CC 0 Creative Commons Pixabay]

 

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