Bitcoin Classic: The 2MB Patch for Bitcoin Core Gains Momentum

Bitcoin Classic is a new code repository of Bitcoin quickly gathering popularity, with Bitcoin developers like Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik already backing the initiative. As of now, it looks to inject a patch shortly that will increase the blocksize, with the ability to include other features later down the road.

According to Bitcoin Classic’s website, “the data show consensus amongst miners for an immediate 2MB increase, and demand amongst users for 8MB or more.” Starting out as a one-feature patch that will increase Bitcoin Core’s blocksize limit to 2MB, the Bitcoin Classic team is “writing the software that miners and users say they want.” Furthermore, the team “will make sure that it solves their needs, help them deploy it, and gracefully upgrade the Bitcoin network’s capacity together.”

Developers working on the project include Jonathan Toomim, Gavin Andresen, Ahmed Bodiwala. Jeff Garzik and Peter Rizun.

Bitmain/Antpool, BitFury, BW.COM, HAOBTC.com, KnCMiner, Genesis Mining and Avalon Miner are some of the mining companies who have come out in favor of Classic, with the F2Pool hinting that it may be joining the group.

F2Pool went to BitcoinTalk.org to posting this policy change announcement:

“Bitcoin” Classic, which despite was born [sic] on the same day that XT dies, is an attempt that could make the hard fork happen sooner. We welcome Classic. We are going to cease support for FSS-RBF after upgrading to version 0.12, some time in the next few weeks. We may not implement the opt-in RBF feature.”

Many of the above supporters have been quite vocal about their support, with Sam Cole, the CEO of KnCMiner, posting and distributing an open letter regarding KnCMiner’s support of Bitcoin Classic.

We have on-boarded about as many users as we can. There simply is no space left to expand bitcoin. There are many competing ideas there are many smart people and possibly too many ideas. The fact remains the same:
Most of the latest development ideas coming out are not addressing our issues this time. So it will fall back on us to protect what we have built and let it expand into what we think it can become.

So I propose that we jump to 2mb in the Bitcoin classic idea.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin Classic appears to have 72% of the hashrate supporting Bitcoin Classic, with 75% suggested as the activation threshold before Bitcoin Classic goes online.

Thus far, Bitcoin exchange and miner BTCC has yet to join this group of miners. In a Reddit post on r/btc, Samson Mow, COO of BTCC, stated:

As previously mentioned, 75% was suggested to be the threshold where Bitcoin Classic is turned online, so at this rate Bitcoin Classic looks to become online in the very near future.

Besides mining support, Bitcoin Classic has also found proponents in the Bitcoin business community, among them Coinbase, OKCoin, Bitstamp, Blockchain.info, Xapo, Bitcoin.com, Foldapp, Bread Wallet, Snapcard.io and Cubits.

Online support for Bitcoin Classic seems particularly to have gained momentum since Thursday’s dramatic departure of Mike Hearn, former bitcoin developer, possibly in response to his declaration that “Bitcoin has failed.”

Of course, not everyone is behind Bitcoin Classic. Core developer Adam Back has been vocal on Twitter in response to the proposal.

.@virtuallylaw 2MB soft-fork running in testnet since dec. dont understand political rally around 2MB hard-fork that’s riskier & same speed. — Adam Back (@adam3us) January 16, 2016