Skip to content

The War within: Bitcoin SegWit Vs Bitcoin Unlimited

There has been a debate for the last two years concerning whether to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit to work as Bitcoin functioning platform.About 95% of all miners have to come to terms before SegWit can be activated while for Bitcoin Unlimited only requires 70% of the miner’s vote.

The long-awaited decision on whether to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit has now been made. 70% of miners who now made a decision on whether to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit but 30% of the miners have not yet decided but it would be interesting to see what they do decide once they get around to exercising their duty.

What does the 70% of miners who have decided mean to Bitcoin?

shutterstock_619625438

This decision simply means that this 70% have decided either to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit. Their decisions depend on their benefits from both platforms whether Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit and the platform with the highest percentage will be used or taken as Bitcoin platform. However, there is a possibility of a split due to some people refusing to use Segwit in preference to Bitcoin Unlimited or the other way round. This could lead to the inception of the idea of running both segwit and bitcoin unlimited concurrently.

And the 30% of the remaining Bitcoin miners?

The remaining 30% of Bitcoin miners will have to decide whether to support Bitcoin Unlimited or SegWit so as to exercise their duties as Bitcoin miners. Their decision will have to put the decision at place since they are the remaining people to decide the fate of Bitcoin as Bitcoin miners. This will greatly affect Bitcoin’s future as a trading and transaction currency. I don’t see any hope of a fork of any kind taking place due to the indecisiveness of the Bitcoin miners.

Is it possible for Bitcoin Unlimited to win this decision?

According to Bitcoin norms, Bitcoin Unlimited is likely to win this decision since it advocates for  a platform that can support all Bitcoin transactions without interruption. Bitcoin Unlimited is likely to do all these without any problems. It still all depends on Bitcoin community whether they will give a majority vote to Bitcoin Unlimited or vote to keep using Bitcoin core. Many bitcoin enthusiasts and experts alike are not yet well convinced with the idea of Bitcoin unlimited as can be seen from this reddit thread from an anonymous redditor.

Taking a get-rich-quick scam like BU seriously enough to do a comparison like this is akin to falling for the false “controversy”.There is no real controversy. BU is simply yet another hostile takeover attempt by large corporate interests.We’ve seen all too many of these scams before, with large advertising budgets to spread disinformation.

This thread and many others that appear online is a clear indication that the cryptocurrency community might not yet be ready for a major shift of Bitcoin operations. At the point of writing this article, Bitcoin Unlimited was more likely to win the comparison.

How Bitcoin exchanges are planning to tackle the Bitcoin Hard Fork

With the Bitcoin markets fixated on slowly making the switch to bigger blocksize, speculation has taken over the Bitcoin market prices. The number of outstanding transactions to be processed on the Bitcoin Network has been piling up due to the limit on the Blocksize of the Bitcoin network. With piling transactions, there has been a delay in the validation of the exchange. This has defeated the unique selling point of the cryptocurrency and the Bitcoin community has concentrated their efforts towards tackling the problem. Let’s dive deep into how proposed alternative for Bitcoin fork will be impacting the exchanges and how they plan to handle the ordeal of fork in the days to come:

Speeding up transactions:

shutterstock_174029489

The Bitcoin community has resolved to speed up the transaction by increasing the block size in which the transactions are produced and  stored  per every ten minutes. This would mean by proposed terms the blocksize would increase from 2 M.B to 8 M.B being able to process more transactions per 10 minutes and thereby delivering on the transaction speed. These bigger blocks would be on the blockchain labelled as Bitcoin Unlimited and already 11% of the nodes are running on Bitcoin Unlimited. But this would mean exchanges also have to shift to the agreed upon currency depending on the final decision.

Exchange’s plan:

According to the statement released by a group of 20 exchanges, their plan for tackling the hard forking would be to list Bitcoin Unlimited as a separate currency. Since the digital currency would be splitting up into two currencies, Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited would be the two blockchains on which the currency would be splitting up depending on the Block sizes. Bitcoin Unlimited would now be listed as an alternative cryptocurrency under the BTU or XBU tickers in the event of a network split.

The exchanges said:

“As exchanges, we have a responsibility to maintain orderly markets that trade continuously 24/7/365. It is incumbent upon us to support a coherent, orderly and industry-wide approach to preparing for and responding to a contentious hard fork. In the case of a bitcoin hard fork, we cannot suspend operations and wait for a winner to emerge.”

Why it becomes necessary:

shutterstock_603872579

The statement signed by Bitfinex, Bitstamp, BTCC, Bitso, Bitsquare, Bitonic, Bitbank, Coinfloor, Coincheck, itBit, QuadrigaCX, Bitt, Bittrex, Kraken, Ripio, ShapeShift, The Rock Trading and Zaif – the exchanges, clearly stated that the exchanges would be listing BU since the fork seems inevitable. The exchanges feel that with the advantages and integrity of the cryptocurrency being questioned, this would indeed be the right move to give the users of the company best service.