I know this whole Bitcoin forking discussion sounds confusing but I’m hoping to break things down into manageable chunks through a number of separate blog posts.
First and foremost you may be aware that Bitcoin needs a major upgrade to cope with all of its new found demand.
There have been many ideas laid out on the table but it looks like they’ve finally narrowed it down to two options which you may have heard of…
Segwit (Segregated Witness) and Segwit2X (The New York Agreement)
Segwit (also know as BiP141)
An optimization proposed by Bitcoin Core developer Pieter Wuille at the end of 2015, SegWit increases the volume of transactions that fit into each block without raising the block size parameter. Specifically, it also removes transaction malleability, an issue that once resolved could lead to a number of network improvements. You can read more about the technical specifics here and here.
Segwit2X (also known as BiP148)
Segwit2X includes activating the exact same optimisation as above. So activating Segwit end of August but there is a difference it will also include….
**A block size increase: **The change, long-proposed as a scaling solution, simply involves updating the software rules to allow for 2MB blocks. A few alternative bitcoin implementations (Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited) emerged with the goal of increasing bitcoin's block size parameter. But none have yet reached the necessary threshold of support.
This block size increase WILL cause a bitcoin hardfork and it will be locked in to happen 3 month after Segwit activation. (end of November).
Bear in mind this is not a Segwit vs Segwit2X battle!
This isn’t a straight forward choose your winner battle. In fact for everything to go smoothly we want a strong consensus for ALL improvements. The developers have worked hard to ensure code deployed during BiP141 is compatible with BiP148.
I will go into this in more details in another article. I will also be covering key dates to watch out for and also guidance on how you can watch it all unfold keeping your eyes in the signalling charts to know if we are doing well or not!
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