Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Upcoming Bitcoin Core Client Will Disconnect SegWit2x Nodes Automatically

TheMerkle Bitcoin Core Blocking SegWit2x

The upcoming Bitcoin Core client update will introduce some interesting changes. Now that SegWit activation has been locked in and BIP148 is in effect, the new client will disconnect nodes supporting the SegWit2x fork. This decision will not go over well with a lot of SegWit2x supporters, as they will see this as an unwarrented attack against the project.

Bitcoin Core 0.15.0 Disconnects SegWit2x Clients

Any radical change made to the Bitcoin Core client is always greeted with a lot of skepticism. This new change introduced in Bitcoin Core 0.15.0 will not be any different, as it seems to be a rather radical decision. Automatically disconnecting any network node which runs the SegWit2x fork seems rather unusual. However, such a decision was to be expected sooner or later. Bitcoin Core supporters have no intention to see a support a solution which introduces 2MB blocks anytime soon.

The community seems to be divided over this decision for the time being. Some people feel it makes perfect sense to do so, as nodes running on different forks will not provide any use to one another. The SegWit2x client is more than capable of dealing with the changes recently introduced to the Bitcoin blockchain, such as rejecting non-SegWit blocks. It seems as if the Bitcoin Core developers want to prevent the November hard fork from introducing any major disruption to the average Bitcoin user, which can be justified.

This updated client will be released well ahead of the November fork. Disconnecting SegWit2x nodes from the network altogether will create a rather interesting scenario. Not everyone will agree with this radical decision at this time, even though it seems the Core developers have a good reason for making this change. Nullc points out not all SegWit2x nodes are 100% compatible with the current network conditions either. That statement makes a lot of sense, although not everyone seems to be on the same page regarding this topic.

The vast majority of Bitcoin Core supporters feel this is the best decision the developers have made in quite some time. It is heralded as “excellent news,” as the Core community wants nothing to do with SegWit2x. This will certainly have some repercussions in the long run, although the real impact has yet to be determined. SegWit2x would be a hard fork anyway and removing the nodes from the network now could turn out to be the smart thing to do after all.

Even though the majority of Bitcoin users have come together to lock in SegWit activation, there are still a lot of different opinions regarding the future. Core developers feel SegWit alone is more than sufficient to make Bitcoin scale and pave the way for the Lightning Network. SegWit2x die-hards want that 2MB block increase in November, alongside the activation of Segregated Witness. These discussions have been going on for quite some time now, yet it seems there will not be unity among Bitcoin supporters anytime soon.

For the time being, it is unclear when we can expect the Bitcoin Core 0.15.0 client. It still needs to go through several release candidates before people can even consider downloading it. Considering it does not introduce any forks -neither soft nor hard- the testing and review period for this new client should not last all that long. It is good to see some changes being introduced without discussions regarding forking Bitcoin and potential chain splits. Many people feel SegWit2x is not the right way to go, but only time will tell.



from The Merkle