If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks then you know that the whole block size debate is boiling to a close.  Segwit2x arose to be a compromise solution, lead by ex-core developer Jeff Garzik, brokered and agreement in New York after the Consensus 2017 conference which had over 90% of the miners and ecosystem in agreement.  Since then BIP91 has locked in, which is an effective lowering of the much exalted soft fork consensus threshold of 95%, by which half of the inner circle of core devs felt was deficient. Regardless of how this was on the surface seen to be a ‘lowering of the standards’ it was done anyway and conveniently so, as segwit was not looking like it would ever pass the 95% bar anyhow (ahem. “I TOLD YOU SO” to all the neckbeards out there, and u/jonny1000!).  Now that segwit2x/segwit is going to be ‘forced’ by way of 90% of the miners starting to reject non-segwit signaling blocks, this ensures that segwit’s threshold of 95% of last 1000 blocks will be met sometime in mid-August.  (yes, you read correct, BIP91 was an 80% majority agreement to come to a 95% agreement by forcing the 20% to agree with you or be orphaned — by force!).

This has set the stage for the drama to follow.  For one there is already a growing group of big blockers who have mobilized to fork off the current Segwit2x/Segwit Bitcoin (let’s call this SegwitCoin) who have identified themselves as BitcoinCash.  They are a fork of BitcoinCore 0.14.x with Segwit and RBF components disabled, and a 8mb Hard Fork coded to engage at Aug 1, 12:20 UTC time.  This guarantees that there will be a ‘big block’ Bitcoin regardless of what happens with the SegwitCoin and the expected in-fighting among the new ‘stewards’ of the main chain (Jeff Garzik and his btc1 team) vs. the old guard which have been deposed (Bitcoin Core, Blockstream). Continue reading →