Majority of bitcoin’s mining power favors modest blocksize increase

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In an open letter published by medium.com community Bitcoin Roundtable, mining pools, bitcoin exchanges and other cryptocurrency leaders stated their support of a modest blocksize increase over a “contentious hard-fork.” This remark is part of the five key points the signers of the letter agreed upon and speaks to the continued debate on how to move bitcoin forward.

According to International Business Times, the mining pools supporting this approach make up 70% of the bitcoin network’s hashing power. Among the mining pools represented are Bitfury and F2Pool. Leaders of bitcoin exchanges including Bitfinex and BIT-X Exchange also signed the letter, as did Litecoin creator Charlie Lee.

The five points made in the letter are:

1. The support of Segregated Witness (SegWit) implementation, when it’s ready, as part of a safe and balanced approach to moving bitcoin forward.
2. The belief that a hard fork at this time would be “extremely detrimental” and may result in two different blockchain versions.
3. The need to work with Bitcoin Core developers over the next three weeks to discuss a roadmap toward a future hard fork.
4. Any changes to consensus rules must be done in a “safe and balanced way.”
5. A call for all bitcoin contributors to set aside their differences and come together to work toward developing a scaling roadmap.

Of course, the call for the community to come together is easier said than done. In a comment to the letter, OB1 co-founder Dr. Washington Sanchez encouraged bitcoin miners in favor of the 2MB hard fork to either join pools that will support this measure or form their own. He explained that the signers don’t “necessarily represent the miners themselves.”

Image credit – Sirius  (CC BY 3.0)