Bitcoin network may be eventually heading towards the hard fork even after the Bitcoin Roundtable community disagreed with the idea of creating a hard fork of blockchain. According to the community, there is a possibility of the hard fork creating two separate blockchains that do not communicate with each other. In such circumstances, the whole bitcoin network can be segmented into two versions, one that works and another that doesn’t.
The prolonged bitcoin debate has not paved the way for any concrete solutions towards increasing the block size. Many proposals so far have been shot down by one or more powerful members of the community. The latest proposal to be shot down was the Bitcoin Classic. Bitcoin Classic had proposed a hard fork to increase the block size from the existing 1 MB to 2 MB. Initially, it received support from various quarters until the Bitcoin Roundtable decided that it will not consent hard-forking bitcoin network due to potential risks involved. According to the Bitcoin Roundtable – a community of bitcoin miners, mining pools, wallet providers, exchanges and other bitcoin-based businesses, the hard fork can result in two different blockchain versions that are incompatible with each other. It may cause huge losses to bitcoin users on the network.
In the previous Bitcoin Roundtable meeting, a set of 5 key points for creating an effective bitcoin future roadmap was announced. Those key points called for an increased co-operation between Bitcoin developers and Bitcoin Roundtable, making subtle changes to the blockchain without creating a hard fork and any BIP requiring hard fork has to be introduced only after a consensus is reached between the developers and Bitcoin RoundTable.
Bitcoin Roundtable May Have the Answer
However, the social media today is flooded with updates from an ongoing Bitcoin Roundtable meeting which is turning out to be completely different from the previous one. According to real-time tweets and Reddit updates, the “Bitcoin Community” made of less than 1 percent to total bitcoin users in the world has decided to implement a hard fork after all. The updates state that this Bitcoin Roundtable meeting has few Bitcoin Core developers present as well and as of now, there is an unofficial consensus to implement SegWit – Segregated Witness soft fork followed by a hard fork in the coming months. The Segregated Witness soft-fork is considered to be an immediate solution to address the block size issue while fixing bitcoin malleability problems. The soft-fork also presents fewer risks compared to the alternative hard fork in the immediate future.
The present roadmap on the drawing board calls for a Bitcoin Classic like hard fork after three months, which will come into effect after a year. The current roadmap under construction aligns with few key points put forth by the Bitcoin Roundtable in its previous meeting. The community is paying attention towards the implementation of soft fork over earlier hard fork proposals and there is ample time before a hard fork is implemented, giving enough time for bitcoin miners to analyze, test and improve the codes before running them on production machines.
The broad Bitcoin community can’t help but feel that the Chinese bitcoin miners are holding Core developers at ransom and dictating their terms instead of letting developers take care of the technical end of the growing alternate global monetary system. But if this means, there will be a solution that can prevent the collapse of Bitcoin network, then it is welcome by all means. After all, people can have only so much patience and the block size debate has gone on for too long without consensus.
Ref: Bitcoin Core- Segregated Witness Benefits | Reddit Updates |@Excellion on Twitter
