Advocates for a bitcoin hard fork have now decided to cancel plans for the so-called SegWit2x fork. The bitcoin blockchain was supposed to split into two blockchains in roughly 8 days. But it looks like SegWit2x backers couldn’t convince enough people in the bitcoin community to make the SegWit2x blockchain the new mainstream bitcoin blockchain.
The SegWit2x fork should have increased the block size to 2 megabytes. This change could have helped when it comes to bitcoin scalability.
But it has always been a controversial change and many bitcoin companies have not actively supported the move. So many feared that this fork could have split the community into two branches.
“Although we strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is even more important: keeping the community together,” the note says. “Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth.”
In other words, in order to keep the community together, SegWit2x backers have decided to call off the fork. The announcement has been signed by BitGo’s Mike Belshe, Xapo’s Wences Casares, Bitmain’s Jihan Wu, Bloq’s Jeff Garzik, Blockchain’s Peter Smith and Shapeshift’s Erik Voorhees.
They all met in person earlier this year in New York to agree on this two-part plan. The first part was a bitcoin update called Segregated Witness. This soft fork already happened back in August.
Source/More: SegWit2x backers cancel plans for bitcoin hard fork | TechCrunch