The Bitcoin scalability debate has been going on for over a year new. Each time the topic arises, it ends in a stalemate. The Bitcoin community is currently divided between whether to use a hard fork or soft fork. While the Bitcoin Core developers are hell-bent on SegWit, not everyone in the community agrees with it.
Bobby Lee, the founder of BTCC — one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges in the world has expressed his support for a hard fork. Bobby Lee in a recent tweet said,
“Agree! How about let’s plan for the #HardFork now, and have it activate ASAP in 2017, along with #SegWit #BitcoinCoreDev #BitcoinUnlimited.”
He was responding to another tweet by Eric Lombrozo, the co-CEO and co-founder of Ciphrex,
“It’s time for the Bitcoin community to set aside past grievances and move forward.”
The Twitter exchange follows a recent interview on Whalepool in which Roger Ver, Phil Potter, Alex Petrov and Eric Lombrozo participated. In the discussion, Roger Ver was vocal against the implementation of SegWit as he believes that the Bitcoin Core hasn’t been considerate towards the interests of cryptocurrency industry or a significant portion of the community.
Bobby Lee doesn’t commit himself to any of the two opposing camps – Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited. However, he imparts a sense of urgency into the message. The Bitcoin network is handling an overwhelming number of transactions at the moment. There have been multiple instances of network clogging due to increased transaction flow, creating a significant backlog of transaction confirmations.
There is a real need to scale Bitcoin network. This is necessary to ensure the survivability of the network in the face of increased demand for blockchain solutions in the mainstream fintech sector. Airing similar concerns, Circle – a popular blockchain based financial platform announced the withdrawal of its Bitcoin exchange services on the platform. Circle has stopped offering its own Bitcoin buying and selling service. Instead, it will be using Coinbase’s services to cater to those who are interested in it. Circle is likely to use a different blockchain infrastructure to operate its services.
Bobby Lee or not, the Bitcoin network is in peril and it is high time the community reached a consensus on the method for scaling Bitcoin network.
Ref: Twitter | Image: NewsBTC