China Miners Alliance announces accelerated implementation of New York Consensus expansion plan

A new agreement has been reached between Chinese bitcoin exchanges and mining companies, which also represent the majority of the bitcoin network’s hashrate. The alliance agreed to accelerate the development and activation of the Segwit2x scaling solution.

Miners support Segwit2x

Segwit2x, or the New York Consensus, is a Bitcoin upgrade proposed by Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG), in May. It has gained widespread consensus in the industry and is particularly popular among Bitcoin miners and businesses. On June 17, Silbert tweeted:

“Chinese miners representing nearly 80% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate have confirmed they will support Segwit2x.”

The news was announced by a coalition of bitcoin miners and exchanges at the China Bitcoin Roundtable on Thursday.

It is reported that the testing of Segwit2x has begun, and signal voting will start from Monday this week.

During a roundtable held during the Global Blockchain Summit in Chengdu, the Bitcoin Alliance reaffirmed its support for Segwit2x and agreed to a new plan to test and roll out Segwit2x as a countermeasure to BIP148, which will be implemented by the core meeting on August 1.

According to Twitter user Cnledger, the Bitcoin mining pools and exchanges that agreed to the above plan include Bitmain Antpool, Btc.top, Bixin, Btcc Pool, F2pool, Huobi, Okcoin, Viabtc, BW, 1Hash, Canoe, Batpool and Bikan.

The alliance said:

“In order to effectively solve the congestion problem of the Bitcoin network, we will accelerate the development of Bitcoin expansion solutions and promote the sustainable, healthy and stable development of Bitcoin.”
“We will immediately start the New York Consensus Segwit2x plan btc1 (https:/github/com/btc1) software testing and join testnet5, and deploy it as soon as possible after the official version is released,” the alliance said. “We will start voting for the segwit2x plan next Monday (June 19). In order to avoid using BIP9 voting to affect the official voting results, we will write the "NYA" mark in the coinbase, which represents voting for the New York Consensus Segwit2x plan.”

The alliance aims to implement the Segwit2x scaling solution as soon as possible, reiterating:

“We are eager to activate the New York Agreement Segwit2x solution before July 31st.”

Wu Jihan proposes a backup plan to prevent BIP148

Prior to the alliance’s announcement, Bitmain proposed a hard fork protection plan against the BIP148 user-activated soft fork. Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu believes that user-activated soft forks are an attack on the Bitcoin network. In his speech at the summit on June 14, he talked about how to prevent BIP148 activation and outlined its weaknesses.

The need to act quickly

Many miners who attended the summit believe that Core developers have violated the Hong Kong consensus agreement reached in February 2016, and they believe that Segwit2x will fulfill this promise that has been made for nearly two years.

Do you think segwit2x can successfully prevent the implementation of BIP148? Feel free to share your views.