The future of Bitcoin development has taken an interesting turn in the past 24, as the Bitcoin Core developers and close to 80% of the network mining power – read: pool operators – have agreed on hard forking Bitcoin. Such a magnanimous event is a world’s first for the bitcoin ecosystem; a shard forking has been out of the question up until now. But what will this agreement do for Bitcoin Classic? Such an agreement would prevent this alternative solution from reaching its activation point.
Also read: Bitcoin Price Surpasses US$455; Moving Towards US$500
Bitcoin Core Devs And Chinese Mining Pools Agree
While a solution to the seemingly infinite Bitcoin block size debate is very positive for the future of bitcoin, there are are always two sides to a story. In this case, it looks like the Bitcoin Core developers have managed to sway the minds of Chinese mining pools, which represent close to 80% of the total Bitcoin mining power.
Up until this point, a hard fork in the future of Bitcoin development would have been out of the question. Neither the Chinese mining pool operators nor the Bitcoin Core developers were too keen on going down this road, as hard forking Bitcoin proves to be quite the challenge, and brings a lot of risks to the table.
But for some reason, Bitcoin Core developers have changed their mind and taken a similar approach to the solution presented by the Bitcoin Classic team. There is one major difference between the two, though, as Bitcoin Classic wanted to fork hard Bitcoin sooner rather than later. It is impossible to say whether or not their solution will effectively work out properly, but it certainly has sparked the efforts by Bitcoin Core.
Some people might even argue how Bitcoin Classic is indirectly responsible for the Bitcoin Core developers to get their act together. There will be people who will refute such a statement, but the similarities between both ideas can not be denied so easily. Regardless of how things will play out eventually, Bitcoin is in line for a hard fork at some stage.
Granted, various mining pools had outspoken a preference for hard forking Bitcoin over implementing Segregated Witness. But even that decision has changed, as the Chinese pools are now on board with implementing Segregated Witness before the hard fork is set to occur several months later. Something has changed the minds of a lot of people, and it seems unlikely a few presentations are the cause of this mind shift.
Deliberate Attempt To Disrupt Bitcoin Classic Activation Threshold?
With so much support for the new Bitcoin Core proposal – in theory, at least – Bitcoin Classic supporters might find themselves in a bit of a pickle very soon. One of the major interesting points about this development solution was how a certain amount of mining power needs to convert to Bitcoin Classic to activate the block size increase “threshold”.
If the Bitcoin Classic solution can not be adopted by the majority of the Bitcoin network, this solution will eventually die out as Bitcoin Core will soft fork the block size increase through Segregated Witness. On paper, it comes down to who can reach majority consensus first before April of 2016, heralding an exciting few weeks for Bitcoin as a whole.
In the end, Bitcoin Classic seems to have spurred a different breed of development into the minds of Bitcoin core developers. It is also the very first time Chinese mining pools and developers seem to agree on something as contentious as a hard fork solution. Whether these are signs of maturity or more politics, is unknown at this time, but this situation sets an interesting precedent for sure.
Source: NewsBTC
