Software Wars: Segwit2x Uncertainty and the Casting of Miner Votes

Just recently news.Bitcoin.com reported on the Segwit2x lead developer Jeff Garzik detailing that the upcoming fork was “still full steam ahead.” Lately, bitcoin proponents from both sides of the scaling debate have been bickering quite a bit, and now many businesses and individuals are either declaring their Segwit2x support or distancing themselves from the project.

Also read: How Coinbase’s GDAX Intends to Evaluate Digital Assets for Exchange Listing

The Wallet Provider Bitgo Reveals Its Contingency Plans

The upcoming Segwit2x hard fork has been the ‘talk of the town’ among cryptocurrency enthusiasts everywhere. As the event approaches, many crypto-luminaries and bitcoin-based organizations have been letting the public know where they stand concerning this consensus change. This week the startup Bitgo revealed its contingency plans for the approaching Segwit2x fork slated to happen at block height 494784.

“The difficulty for wallet providers handling the Segwit2x upgrade is that it does not provide an ability to safely send transactions onto only one side of the forked chain,” explains Mike Belshe co-founder and CEO of Bitgo. “To ensure safe spending of coins, Bitgo will build infrastructure to isolate each transaction and direct it to only one chain — Everyone at Bitgo very much would like to see one chain emerge after the fork — Although there is much debate within the community right now about how the fork will play out, we are prepared for any result.”

Bitgo will be supporting the most viable chain as quickly as possible (based primarily on market price), and will support the minority chain a few weeks thereafter. Although this process will likely take a few days to settle, all Bitgo customers should feel safe that value from both coins will be preserved and made available to them.

Individuals Distancing Themselves from Segwit2x

Following the announcement from Bitgo, two individuals who previously supported Segwit2x have decided to distance themselves from the project. Just recently the founder and CEO of Openbazaar (OB), Brian Hoffman, told his Twitter followers he doesn’t believe in Segwit2x anymore. The OB founder also wrote a blog post about his decision, detailing why he supported the fork initially and why he changed his mind.

“I supported Segwit2x is because I hoped that by making Segwit a reality that we could somehow bring a fractured Bitcoin community tighter together when it needed it most,” explains Hoffman’s post.

I was wrong — I no longer feel this is a reality.

Another well-known bitcoin luminary that has decided to distance himself from Segwit2x project is Vinny Lingham. Lingham’s public announcement was a bit more disturbing as the entrepreneur claims that he received “death threats” for supporting the fork. The Civic founder and bitcoin investor Lingham tells his 65,000 Twitter followers:  

In light of the recent death threats that I have received, I realize that Segwit2x is a bad idea and I publicly revoke my support for it.

The Segwit2x Mailing List Drama

On the Segwit2x mailing list for developers, the quarreling and debates are just as bad as in social media. Bitso’s Daniel Vogel explains that he thinks Segwit2x support is faltering with miners like F2 Pool, Slush, Viabtc and others saying they may not mine the fork. “When do we stop and rethink — When we get to less than 50% hashing power?” asks Vogel. “Whether this failure is the fault of some loudmouths in twitter, some trolls in Reddit, or very opinionated and principled engineers and scientists is irrelevant — What’s relevant is that NYA has failed to bring the community together and provide a safe mechanism to upgrade Bitcoin as it had intended to do.”

However, many Segwit2x supporters on the mailing list are very confident miners will see Segwit2x through, just as they did this past summer with Segregated Witness. One developer writes in response to Vogel’s statements that there’s not much to do but sit back and wait for block 494784.

This is why we are here — Bitcoin Core is outdated and non-scalable code because the developers are incompetent or have their own secret agenda they won’t share with investors which is a federal crime similar to insider trading.

Spectators Wait for Miners to Cast Their Votes

There are a lot more arguments taking place on the developer mailing list, and lots of individuals are expressing their opinions. The question everyone wants to know is; whether or not developer mailing lists, Twitter polls, and Reddit forums really mean anything. The fact is many people believe the mining community will be the next in line to cast their votes, and some of these bitcoin proponents think hashrate voting is all that truly matters.

What do you think about the upcoming fork and statements from Bitgo, Brian Hoffman, and Vinny Lingham? Do you agree with Bitso’s Daniel Vogel or do you think Bitcoin Core is “outdated?” Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images via Pixabay, Linkedin, Twitter, and Bitgo. 

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