Bitcoin Forum

Something strange is happening right now.
 I do not fully understand what yet but it seems some members of Pro-segwit2x group are publicly withdrawing their support for SegWit2x

Could this mean the hard fork won't be going on again? Seems they aren't too happy the way Bitcoin price is shooting up or it is just normal and expected withdraws?

Well, there's little more than 1 programmer working on Segwit2x, and that's a serious contrast to the Bitcoin Core team (30 or 40 programmers) when you look at the Github account for the S2x (confusing named "BTC1") software client.

So claims of industry-wide consensus, a professional team or decentralised development are looking a little different in reality. At least 1 of the NYA signatories made comments to that effect.

And a couple hours later, we see Blockchain.info double down in support of Segwit2x. They basically issued a repeat of Xapo's statement. They will consider the strongest chain to be "Bitcoin" regardless of anything else, and will not support the minority chain in the long term (though they will likely make it available for withdrawal). See here: https://twitter.com/blockchain/status/918576340789616640

Their wallet was already less secure than a lightweight desktop client like Electrum, anyway. There's definitely no reason to use them now. But this raises an important question:


Is the above true? If so, that could have serious ramifications for network activity when the November fork takes place. This could mean a lot of lost bitcoins. It could also mean claims that the 2X chain not only is stronger POW-wise, but has more economic activity. Source: https://twitter.com/kyletorpey/status/918583640317075457

F2Pool controlled by chinese miner Wang Chung recently withdrew support from the "intention" signaling as he promised, so we already have Slushpool and F2Pool to survive after the hardfork:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/75wh5b/block_489492_f2pool_doesnt_signal_nya_anymore/

The question is: Is this enough hashrate to survive a potential 51% attack by the NYAers?

But in one sense it is the weakest possible support short of outright opposition.

It is effectively saying "we will do whatever other people do"...  So if you have a dispute between two groups, one saying "We'll do what other people do" and another group saying "We absolutely positively will not do thing-B but will instead do thing-A"  ... what do you think is going to happen?

In the presence of a considerable part of the community that won't follow B2X under almost any condition bc.i's statement is not really all that supportive.

It's something that blockchain claims but I am fairly confident that it has no basis in reality. They base the claim on how many transactions are submitted through their API, but many people pick up random transactions from the network and submit it to their API because it has, at times, been the only way to make transactions reliably display on their site, because their nodes are sometimes down.  Transactions generated by their wallet have been historically distinctive in a number of ways-- they are not generating anywhere near that number of transactions on the network.

Until  now,three companies have abandoned the New York Agreement so far.

1.Bitwala
2.F2Pool.
3.Wayniloans.

Out of these,two have said that they expected that bitcoin core team would support segwit 2x and now having known that they don't support,they are also withdrawing the support.

Recently,95%of hash power was signaled towards segwit 2x.Now,f2Pool which has 10% of hash power has withdrawn.So only 85%support for segwit 2x.Its been celebrated as a great victory for the core team.

But the operator of F2Pool wang chung is already known for his controversial statements.so,we would have to wait and see whether hard fork would occur or not.

OP, there was really no support from the people that matter. The Core engineers, who are the best minds in Bitcoin, and the community, and I do not mean the people. I mean the ones who are running the full nodes. The good majority of them still run Core software.

https://i.imgur.com/sFwAhJN.png

They let their actions speak. "Signalling" from the miners and the merchants signing the NYA mean nothing. This is Bitcoin.

It does speak to the character of the people involved in the whole business of Bitcoin how the NYA agreement was made and what has happened since.
As I see it: Segwit wasn't going to get deployed, it didn't have enough support.  Big blockers wanted bigger blocks rather than Segwit, Segwitters didn't really want big blocks.

So they all agree: we do Segwit, then we double the block size. That gets enough votes and Segwit goes live, then the segwitters decide that they don't want big blocks and they already have what they want, so stop voting for the block size increase.

Is that about right? Basically the Segwit guys are screwing over the big blockers by reneging on the deal now that their part is passed?

If F2Pool has abandoned the New York Agreement then, from my point of view, 2X is dead.
It is one of the mayor pools in the world.

And as other has mentioned before, if it does not have the support from developers and it is something created to fulfill some shady intentions from certain individuals..

you don't need to think too much about its premature death.

Thanks for the reassurance. I suspected the numbers were being fudged somehow. At the same time, I know that BCI is a favorite among noobs, so I'm definitely concerned about their support for Segwit2x should it be the stronger-POW chain. It's also not clear what timeframe Xapo and BCI are talking about. What if both chains -- at various times -- have more cumulative POW than the other? I can't tell from their posts what happens if there is no clear cut "winner" (in terms of difficulty).


F2Pool said they were dropping out like a month ago. They said they would stop signalling the NYA on the next pool server restart. Why are they still signalling the NYA? There are rumors of various threats coming Wang Chun's way (from Bitmain mostly) but I don't know the details or if there is any truth to the rumors.

No.

Supporters of Segwit BIP142 (aka Bitcoin Core's original version) weren't involved in any deal. The NYA deal was unilaterally agreed by it's miner/service company signatories, and these companies, especially the miners, were split on whether to activate Segwit BIP 142 beforehand.

And BIP91 (which was a simple block orphaning mechanism used to activate Segwit's BIP142) was written by 1 programmer, representing no-one except himself, and with the intention of resolving incompatibilities between the NYA Segwit deployment and the BIP142 Segwit deployment.

I don't even get why they need all those SegWit2x and Forks for bitcoin, it seems like they just try to get new coins to sell them ,as you saw in BCH it was $800 and now $300 :)

Actually, BIP91 predated that NYA entirely and was written as a tool for miners to avoid a BIP148 introduced split.

BTC1 adopted it (with some prodding by its author) and also kept its signaling the same, forever obfuscating the activation.  All of the miners I've spoken to were running segsignal (BIP91) and not 2x.

Were never involved with the "NYA" at all.

It's like your neighbors making a deal among themselves to divide up your home and assets... and now people are calling you out for reneging on an agreement that you never agreed to!

I don't think so. The email (https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014380.html) proposing it literally references "the Barry Silbert proposal" which, although it may not have been published at that time, was leaked a day or two before it was actually published.

Hmm interesting so is it possible that we will be able to avoid the fork if 2x keeps losing support? Let's say only 49% of the network is signaling 2x, could this mean a fork would be avoided? If not what would it take to avoid it or is it too late?

Signalling at this point doesn't mean anything. It's unlikely that any miners are actually running the 2X software anyway. And it's certainly possible that the fork may be avoided entirely if it keeps losing support. I was glad to wake up today to considerably lower NYA signalling (under 80%) over the last 144 blocks. Apparently, F2Pool has finally stopped signalling in support of it. So that's a big start.

But my main concern there is that Bitmain alone might control a majority of the global hash rate. It's still seems like things could get very messy if companies like Coinbase, Blockchain, Bitpay and Xapo -- in addition to Bitmain -- follow through on the fork.

This is what happens when people go behind close doors on decentralized stuff.

All of sudden you want to control bitcoin? Chinese miners are unstoppable so good luck. I support the developers who been working on Bitcoin when no one even know it existed.

There's two separate issues here, and I think one of them is unfortunately being glossed over. The first is obvious: no user who understands how Bitcoin works is interested in backroom deals that alter protocol rules.

But the other issue that won't be solved by a Segwit2x failure is the matter of economic coercion, and the tendency for forkers on both sides of the debate to engage in it.

Unfortunately, much of the #NO2X crowd still doesn't seem to understand backward compatibility. Many of them continue to repeat the falsehoods that "soft forks are backward compatible" and "BIP148 was backward compatible." The reality is that soft forks can be incompatible and that BIP148 was very likely to be incompatible.

The reason this issue is important to me is that the UASF crowd was leveraging the possibility of wipeout and replay attacks to force other users (e.g. BIP141 node operators) to change their consensus rules. They did so knowing that the vast majority of the network would not be enforcing BIP148, as it was incompatible with Core (if not enforced by majority hash rate). I was especially disgusted by the lack of concern for peoples' funds that BIP148 supporters had. And unfortunately, due to the manipulative rhetoric used at the time ("BIP148 is Bitcoin", "If miners don't run BIP148 they are 51% attacking the network", "all soft forks are backward compatible") we now have quite a lot of people continuing to repeat falsehoods about the safety of contentious soft forks.

I understand why these falsehoods were spread, and I can maybe even sympathize with the reasoning from a practical standpoint. But now we are in a situation where future contentious soft forks are even more likely to cause network splits, because people have been so misinformed about what soft forks are and why they might be incompatible.

A BIP148 split would have been indistinguishable from a hard fork, and it would have been carried out on a ~ 2-month timeline. I really resent Luke and others for pushing it, as such. And I really respect the Core developers who spoke out against it. It seemed really reckless, and it's a bit upsetting that people seem able to acknowledge that Segwit2x is contentious/risky/ethically wrong, but unable to acknowledge the same of BIP148. To boot, contentious soft forks expose users to additional wipeout/reorg attack risk that doesn't exist in hard forks. The issue is compatibility (not whether you wanted Segwit). I was supporting Segwit almost 2 years ago. Doesn't mean I was willing to split the chain over it -- on a ~ 2-month timeline no less.

Speak out against backroom deals -- yes. But don't underestimate the cost of threatening peoples' money and coercing them into changing consensus rules. That goes for both sides of this debate. I absolutely don't feel like a member of the Bitcoin community anymore -- it's hard for me to accept that a community even exists now. I still believe it will remain the top cryptocurrency; in that sense, I am a Bitcoin maximalist. But my decision to hold bitcoins vs. innovative altcoins is purely a matter of financial speculation now. If Bitcoin were co-opted by the corporate Segwit2x movement, I'm not sure I would even really care anymore. I'd just pick up the pieces and move onto the next project worth believing in, and try to help to build a culture that doesn't sacrifice consensus because of one side's impatience (BIP148) or business interests (2X).

Thanks for actually being thoughtful, though I think it is a little more subtle than you suggest:  BIP148 would have been backwards compatible IF and Only if hashrate became compatible with it.  The people arguing that it was compatible were not, I think, trying in any way to be dishonest but rather were pretty convinced that hashrate would be compatible with it when it activated (regardless of this view being justified) and to whatever extent they had doubts any failure they would attribute to hashrate not doing what it was supposed to do (regardless of this view being justified...).

I think this is an unreasonable risk and to this day I don't understand why quite a few other people thought it was an acceptable one.  But, on the other hand, they were right that hashpower would (effectively) go along with it.

Every other point I agree with, in particular your comments on the timeline of it.  I think though that I would conclude that they took a gamble and won, elsewhere we might applaud them with tremendous foresight as we often do for people successful primarily through chance... :)  OTOH, what they were gambling with was the safety and stability of a shared resource that we all count on...

The intervention of 2x unfortunately substantially eliminated one of the main payoffs proponents of BIP148 probably anticipated:  Rejecting the notion that miner forced capacity hardforks were something we needed to respond to on an immediate basis, thus allowing us to make more progress with less drama.  Maybe we'll be there after November.

I think the thing we should worry about isn't recriminations about BIP148 but what are reasonable expectations for consensus upgrades to Bitcoin.  I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to happen, generally, on a time frame of less than years.  It certainly isn't the case for internet infrastructure protocols like BGP, which are easier to upgrade than Bitcoin...  If a chance is well understood and widely supported, then sure Bitcoin can deploy them faster, but I think our base expectation should be years.   I think this is the fundamental disconnect that fed a lot of fuel to the short timeframe of BIP148.

We'll I hope, in that case, the support will  keep dropping the next couple of days and we'll hopefully end up avoiding a fork. Because I feel like this one is going go get very ugly if it goes through. It's not going to be as uneventful as the bitcoin cash one.
I saw the statement of coinbase on 2x and I must say I wasn't surprised. After the bitcoin cash outrage they felt like they had to do support the fork from the start. Still the wrong decision though.

I am not sure how accurate this still is but from the NYA agreement:

NYA Agreement (http://segwit.party/nya/)

Yea things are pretty weird for bitcoin at the moment because there are essentially 2 different major groups at the moment, one for and one against. I know Coinbase played a huge role in the NYA agreement for Segwit2x, it was another reason why they chose not to support BCC.

Good news is pricing is reaching $6000 for a bitcoin. But the fork adopted by most players will eventually go to the one with the highest number of hash power.

You are forgetting about Bitmain. They control or influence enough hashpower to ensure the fork happens mid November. Jihan Wu has always said in public they will change to mining with btc1 no reason to doubt his committment so far.

Hope so - so that the community can unite and move bitcoin forward to next level. No an expert here, just wondering why increase block size to 2MB. Is it better to reduce block time and block reward in half? This way - 
 1. Miners will get same amount of reward (half amount per block, but double amount of blocks in same time period)
 2. Bitcoin network will process double amount of transactions
 3. Confirmation time will reduce in half - faster transaction

It was weak anyways, they could barely help you with anything

The fact that Bitmain and Jihan Wu can single-handedly decide to go through with the segwit 2x fork is everything that's wrong with bitcoin at this moment. The community is clearly against the fork but seemingly Mr. Wu doesn't care.

I really think that the Fork is gonna happen but maybe it will not be exactly november but who knows :)

It looks like the support is dwindling as we get closer to this mid-november hard fork deadline. Let's wait and see.

The same way he changed his miners to mine BCC when he initiated the last hard fork?!

A way to monitor support of the fork is to see how traders are betting on BT2/BTC (https://bitinfocharts.com/markets/bitfinex/bt2-btc.html) futures.

In november or early in 2018 the fork will happen.
Its just a matter of time.

I don't think all of these forks: BCH, BTC and BC2 are good for Bitcoin or the crypto industry long term. It creates confusion in the minds of investors and businesses on which chain is the "real" bitcoin. For better or worse Bitcoin remains the #1 crypto asset benefiting from network effects. It is my sincere hope that Bitcoin avoids the fork and that the industry focuses on increased crypto adoption by consumers and businesses rather than more bitcoin forks. Have any of you attempted to send BTC with a Segwit enabled Ledger Nano S? Transaction costs are at least 50% to 80% lower than they were before the August fork.

I wouldn't think about it like that. The miner takes all the risk with a fork in a proof-of-work economy. Sure, fork shenanigans and playing games with hashpower distribution could affect the markets in the short/mid term. But Bitmain would be the one taking the risk, because they are expending the energy to mine the coins. If no one wants to buy their forked coins, they've flushed a lot of money down the toilet. Users just need to be able to hold through all the shenanigans and price swings. They won't lose anything.

Now, if Bitmain and the major services/exchanges succeed in pushing most of the user base into a fork, we've got problems. Then I might start looking into other coins to invest in long term. :P But I think users will stay on the legacy chain, for the most part.

You can check SegWit2X support from another point of view: The point of view of the Market.
I discovered that Bitfinex let you trade with what they call Chain Split Tokens (CST)
I let you their blog post here: https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/221

If you see the graphs the CST for SegWit2X is going down so the market is not really buying the new SegWit2X. I am not saying it will fail , I am just highlighting the market position about it.

peace

I agree on the part where you say that Bitmain is taking a risk but I think it's a risk they can afford. If it doesn't work out they will make some sort of loss but that won't ruin their business. The question really is, which chain will get the BTC ticker? If the legacy chain gets it we're good otherwise things could get ugly.

Explain why.

(exchanges where there is any ambiguity as to which symbol means which coin will see their business suffer, the problem solves itself really)

I don't believe it matters even to the exchange. Would you choose which exchange to use on the basis that they listed Bitcoin as XBT instead of BTC as already the case now? There is a very similar situation in futures trading where the same futures contract have different tickers depending on the data feed provider you are using. Traders just get used to whatever they use.
Once an exchange has implemented a coin it's very difficult for them to change the ticker, so the new coins will have to be given new tickers (eg. Bitfinex B2X) and the legacy coin will keep BTC or XBT.

That doesn't really explain proposed plans to change BTC to BC1 on one exchange (Coinbase i believe)


And my comment stands really: if any exchange changes what the BTC or XBT currency symbols represent, the precedent is set. No-one wants to re-read FAQs on a regular basis to see what Bitcoin is listed as this week/month, and those exchanges will get terrible customer feedback as a result. And then their customers will leave.

I hadn't heard about that proposal, it seems a very strange decision to me.


Yes, I think we're agreeing here. It doesn't really matter what they call it but changing it is not good either from a technical perspective of implementing it (think of the historical database records) or from keeping your customers happy point of view.

I think it's too easy to say that the problem will solve itself.  If some exchanges hand the BTC ticker to the 2x chain people who are new to the space might be buying 2x coins instead of the legacy bitcoin. And I am not sure if that will be beneficial to the whole ecosystem.

Big discussion is going on and it is hard to say that everything is clear we need to stay thight and see what will happen in coming days. The price fluctuation is too much it might be possible to come back to lower levels

Well, that's exactly what I said, except I imagined the secondary consequences.

Except you're suggesting the information will never reach newbies that when buying BTC at Coinbase, one actually receives B2X or whatever it's called. People will learn, and react as they see fit. There's nothing we can do to stop Coinbase behaving like this, but we can control our response. Spread the word: certain exchanges are planning to change what BTC means on their platform.

They are losing support and I hope there will be no fork. It isn't necessary to introduce 2mb block. Look at bitcoin cash.

Exactly, there's nothing we can do to stimulate some exchanges to recognize the legacy chain as the one and only bitcoin. The only thing we can do in such a scenario is to spread to word to newer 'investors' and heavily advise against using the platforms of Coinbase and other companies who've shown interest in supporting the 2x chain. Whatever happens I will try to support the legacy chain unconditionally.

The market is very sensitive right now but as per my knowledge this  hard fork should happen for goodness of the community.

Yet, as usual, it looks like it's moving in a direction of a benifit of few.

I'm extremely disapointed in Bitcoin's open-source nature. I always supported Core's roadmap but i also welcomed new update/scaling solutions.

It turned into a major shitshow from each of them; XT/Classic/BU/ABC/Bcash/2X etc... they where all disgusting, cheap, bugged, hostile take overs.

But the open-source nature is situated in the Core's team, hundreds of people working day/night to get the job done is something i really admire and i'm so gratefull we got that team working on Bitcoin. Most of them dont get paid they do it as a hobby. They know how important Blockchain will be for all of uss. Core doesn't talk into there own personal agenda but they talk for commen interest aka; for the people while keeping the mainchain decentralised and secure as possible.

Clearly, nothing can beat Core's team because it's already a decentralised open-source development team! Thats why other scaling solutions are doomed to fail by rushing it with agrassive business model like Roger Ver version(s).

2x is one of those pathetic/disgusting/cheap/hostile/agressive take over. Jeff was one of the good guys but he's getting paid to play a sneaky snake.

I see 2x as a smoke screeen to save face for any future 'agreements' in this case just to activate Segwit that also open the doors for 2e layers.

- Very low community support.

- No real nodes.

- No real development team.

- 2x is way to rushed.

I want to see Core team pumping every singel potential out of Segwit before considering a (mb) hard fork and i'm sure Core can deliver uss a smooth hard fork when that time comes.

The fork will happen in rougly 4000 blocks, therefore you can expect it to happen in the middle
of November.

http://bashco.github.io/2x_Countdown/

On this link you can find a countdown until the actual fork date.

yes, i guess supporters realize that bitcoin is on a stable and good lookout now.
transaction fees not increasing, segwit already allowing more tx per day, if people use it.

who needs more btc forks? only high speculating or manipulating people.

I have this same confusion. Just a month ago it was thought as a magical remedy which could end up all the problems relating to bitcoinm People were thinking this to be capable of even overthrowing bitcoin. And now there are so many people criticizing it. Lets see what happens to it.

I completely agree with you. It's sad if you think about it. I haven't been in the space for too long but even I recognize the fact that 2x is just a plain attack on bitcoin and what it stands for. We've got one shot to make this exciting technology work. Let's do it right.

This is what I have understand , please correct me if wrong;

So when the forks happens, we will have bitcoin and bitcoingold. The new chain is called bitcoin gold.

So every time there will be a fork, the new one gets a new name... this way you can actually never do a fork and keep the same name as there is always a big community that are for and against the fork.
when eth was forking the new chain was eth and the old one was eth classic. This help new people have less confusion as eth was still eth for the outside world.

Lets say that in the next 10 year there are couple of forks again....  at the end once you want to buy or trade or use your coins you have to ask the other person do you want btc, bcc, btc 2x, btc xxx, btc gghh, btc hdgdh, btc blabla.... you get the point :) this isnt helping at all.

The majority of the dev core are not supporting seg2x, right? So what do they support? the original one? Do they have any planning to solve the slow and high fees? or is their standpoint dont fuck with the chain which I am 90% agree with to a certain point.

Main problem is that I dont see anyway to soft fork the chain and get everybody on board so you can evolve the bitcoin in the right direction without having a big fight in the community. My grandma don’t care and cant care what you called, she just want to use here btc, simpel, not going to read 1000 pages first to decide which chain is beter.


So let say the fork goes live, it will be called bitcoin gold.... not good as its just another altcoin again like bitcoin cash.
If it don’t go live.... we still have the same problem with the slow transctions and high fees... so whats the backup plan of de dev team?



edit: digging more in the rabbit hole it appears that the bitcoin gold is something else than segwit2x..... puhhhhh.... this shit is getting pretty complicated. but still the question remains... what the dev solution to this mess?

I am the same confused like you with all that forks,in a case of soft forks looks like new fashion,creating new premined btc,bittrex rule is no premine,most serious is 2x btc war escalation,looks like final battle die or alive
Final effect can be negative sentiment for btc and people like Dimon will walk in glory,After all that years of gaining trust we have that chaos,greedy,wha dev can do,so i ve been reading that 2x may even attack core
and core i dont know,but maybe 2x will not happen

I certainly don't speak for Core but I believe that the solution lies with more Full Nodes.
If the block size is increased, it will put pressure like bandwidth and space requirements on users with Full Nodes.
This will result in few people running them, which will result in more centralization in mining pools and mining companies.
Which makes bitcoin less decentralized and more prone to government shutdown and a 51% attack.

I expect an event of SegWit2x with impatience! Free coins will prevent nobody!

One of my conjectures is that 2x dying was always part of the plan to make Bitcoin immutable by destroying Core and all the fools who accepted SegWit transactions:

---