Possible disruption in bitcoin payment system

The bitcoin.org website announced the possible disruption in bitcoin payment system starting from July 31. On Tuesday, August 01, from 02:00 CEST bitcoin blockchain will start running alternative core clients with ability to increase number of transactions in bitcoin payment system. Bitcoin nodes, users who run the core bitcoin software, vote on which version of softwere will implement into blockchain. The old version and the new versions of bitcoin software will compete for primacy over main bitcoin blockchain. On August 1, a portion of bitcoin’s nodes will run software that another portion of nodes are not fully compatible with. This may create problems for bitcoin users.

Users are advised to refrain from payments in bitcoin from July 31st until this is settled out. Transactions in ‘losing’ version of core software might render invalid and founds will be lost. Two versions of proposed bitcoin scalability which compete with current solution, differ in approach. The ‘SegWit’ solution (aka BIP141) is developed by core bitcoin developers, and tested extensively over past months. It implements ‘User Activated Soft Fork’ approach, allowing changes to happen when 95 per cent of network power signals that is ready to change. This proposal will not increase the 1MB block size. Another version of core software: SegWit2X (aka ‘The ‘New York Agreement’) is a proposal of major bitcoin companies and mining pools (mostly from China). It is not developed by core bitcoin contributors, and will require 80 per cent of network power to signal that is ready for change. This solution envisaged the change of the block size to 2MB.

Looking at the statistics from nodes that already actively vote in this events, bitcoin will almost sure enact changes in its network.

The bitcoin.org originally registered and owned by Bitcoin’s first two developers, Satoshi Nakamoto and Martti Malmi, is now an independent open source project with contributors from around the world.