Decision(s) about technological changes are ahead of Bitcoin in the next days. Segwit, Segwit2x, UASF, hardfork – all more or less probable solutions come into play, including two separate chains of Bitcoin.
Bitcoinpit approached a few people engaged in providing crypto technology and services with questions regarding current situation, possible scenarios, and their preferred solution.
Are you keeping an eye on current bitcoin code development?
Manfred Karrer (founder of decentralized P2P exchange Bisq, former Bitsquare): Yes, of course. It is fundamental specially regarding the risks of a chain split if SegWit would not get activated before 1.8.
Marián Jančuška (operator of the 1st BTC ATM in Slovakia and Europe Mojbitcoin.sk): I’m not a developer myself, so I’m trying to identify trustworthy and unbiased individuals with an ability to assess the quality of the code. I then make decisions based on their opinions.
Juraj Bednár (hacker, entrepreneur and co-founder of Paralelni Polis): A little bit. What I see as a problem is that a lot of people think about Bitcoin in terms of code and technical issues. But Bitcoin is a social institution, it is a network of people who transfer value.
The main problem is that the value of the network depends on the number
of users (roughly n^2). What the geeks don’t get is that most people don’t care about Segwit, block size or anything like that. They care about transaction costs. We should talk more about non-technical implications of these improvements. What does it mean for an average shop-owner or Bitcoin user?
Peter Šurda (Bitcoin economist and Bitmessage core developer): I don’t hold any particular opinion on the state of Bitcoin. It will develop someway.
What version of Bitcoin do you think will win? Can there exist more than one version long-term? How can it impact Bitcoin ecosystem?
MK: I am sure Bitcoin core is the winner and the reason is because it has by far the most intelligence gathered there. Those who have built and maintained the projects since many years have earned priceless experience.
MJ: I have little insight into what each camp is capable of doing and what they plan to do in various scenarios that can occur. I prefer UASF/SegWit solution but I’m preparing for any other outcome.
Technically it can, of course. However economic viability of two or more bitcoins is questionable long-term.
I guess it would be a mix of positive and negative impacts. Positive in that heated “debate” between the two camps would probably finally fade out and each camp could focus on proving their solution in real life. Negative impacts would include general confusion and worsening of Bitcoin’s perception, price drop/volatility, additional work and resources needed for necessary adjustments and more…
JB: I have no idea.
I think right now all options are open. I believe there won’t be an agreement on unlimited blocks, so if the part of the community that wants unlimited blocks wants them, they should not wait and they should fork off the network rather sooner than later.
I don’t fear hard fork too much, we will eventually see which version
wins. A hard fork carries most of its users.
What solution (UASF, Segwit, Segwit2x,…) do you prefer (if any) and why? Or you don’t care at all…
MK: I support SegWit and Bip 149 as well as Bip 148 (UASF). SegWit2x might be a useful tool to help miners not to lose face and activate SegWit. But I am sure it will fail with it’s hard fork attempts.
MJ: I prefer UASF/SegWit and that is what Bitcoin ATM (www.mojbitcoin.sk) is currently signaling and is prepared to follow after August 1st.
JB: Segwit is useful for other things besides scaling, so I prefer any solution that implements Segwit or any transaction malleability solution. Other than that, I think that Bitcoin scaling is a non-issue. We will soon have Rootstock sidechain that is scalable (it does not even depend on Segwit), there are working Lightning network implementations. I would not have a problem with larger blocks either. Whatever works.