Bitmain, Chinese mining software and hardware producer, has announced a successful testing of SegWit2x, alternative scaling solution, whose alpha version is scheduled to be released on 16 June.
SegWit2x is a counter-move of miners to UASF/BIP148. According to Bitmain’s statement, UASF, or User Activated Soft Fork, might increase the risk of a 51% attack on the Bitcoin blockchain, due to the node’s software changing that would invalidate certain kinds of previously valid blocks after a flag day.
“If the UASF chain is activated and if the UASF chain gains the majority hash rate, then the nodes following the original chain will reorganize and begin to follow the UASF chain. In such an event, a significant number of financial transaction records will disappear. This is a risk that UASF nodes impose on nodes intending to follow the original chain.”
Bitmain predicts that if UASF does not attract enough support from miners, then its blockchain may face a serious risk of permanent stagnation, when the blockchain of a minority fork stops being extended due to low economic incentive for miners.
“BIP148 poses a significant risk for the Bitcoin ecosystem, so we are preparing a contingency plan to protect the economic activity on the Bitcoin blockchain from this threat.”
On 24 May 2017 Bitcoin companies and miners, representing 83% of Bitcoin network’s hash rate, signed an agreement on a scaling solution. The document says that the Bitcoin protocol upgrade should be deployed simultaneously and based on the original Segwit2Mb proposal. Signers agreed to activate SegWit at an 80% threshold, while the Bitcoin Core’s SegWit needs 95% of the hashrate to be activated. SegWit2x also supposes to block size limit increase to 2MB.
“The UAHF proposal is a peaceful and voluntary departure of different community members who have different opinions or visions, and it is not intended to make an attack against other blockchain(s), even if the UAHF chain has the higher hash rate.”
Bitmain also accuses the Bitcoin Core developers of trying to sabotage the New York agreement and declining to attend the meeting.
“This agreement is the hard work of those who sincerely believe in Bitcoin and those entrepreneurs or investors who have strong financial interest in scaling Bitcoin quickly and unitedly. Bitmain is a supporter of the agreement.”
SegWit2x supporters have developed a plan to counteract possible UASF. They plan to activate hard fork after 12 hours and 20 minutes after the UASF is activated. There will be a “must be big” rule at the fork block (first block which adopt the consensus rule change). The block size of the fork block must be larger than 1,000,000 Byte. Block size will be increased to up to 8MB, but miners will asked to soft-limit block size to less than 2MB. Miners who generate large blocks will be punished by economic incentives, but not limiting the block size.
According to their preliminary road map, SegWit2x supporters plan to increase the block size limit in August to 2MB, in September to 4.194MB, in April 2018 to 5.93MB, in August 2018 to 8.39MB, in April 2019 to 11.86MB, in August 2019 to 16.78MB.
Bitmain’s statement was given a hostile reception by the Bitcoin Core developer. One of them, Luke Dashjr, wrote on his twitter that “Bitmain plans to attack the network on August 1st and blame BIP148.”
source http://bitcoinswiz.com/bitmain-announces-timeline-of-alternative-segwit-protocol-release/
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