SegWit activation still not in sight? Core developers think New York Scaling Agreement timeframe is unrealistic

Bitcoin Core developers have repeatedly criticized the New York Bitcoin Scaling Agreement, a group of 56 industry companies representing nearly 83% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate that was agreed upon by Digital Currency Group (DCG) and others. The new agreement calls for the deployment of SegWit in September and a hard fork six months later.

On May 23, Digital Currency Group released the first official statement of the Consensus 2017 Bitcoin Scaling Agreement. The statement stated that Digital Currency Group and 56 other companies agreed to set the SegWit activation threshold to 80% of the total network computing power support and quickly execute a 2MB hard fork thereafter, thereby achieving the expansion of the Bitcoin network.

Valery Vavilov, CEO of BitFury, one of the main participants in this expansion agreement, said:

“We are delighted that this consensus has finally been reached. BitFury and the vast majority fully support this historic decision. This is a very important moment for the Bitcoin ecosystem and this scaling solution will open a new chapter for Bitcoin technology.”

However, Bitcoin Core developers Matt Corallo and Greg Maxwell immediately criticized the bitcoin scaling agreement because the proposal was made without consulting Core developers and contributors in the open-source bitcoin development community.

“This proposal is highly unrealistic”

More importantly, Corallo and Maxwell stressed that the time frame of the proposal is highly unrealistic. The proposal proposes a major change to SegWit's activation mechanism - lowering the SegWit activation threshold from 95% to 80%. Maxwell pointed out that such a change would not be possible before the old SegWit deployment expires.

Maxwell explained:

“It is basically impossible to redeploy SegWit before the old deployment expires. The reason is that for simplicity and security reasons, all current Bitcoin client versions that support SegWit mostly only have SegWit representation paths… For example, SegWit transactions and non-SegWit transactions are not handled separately. The current deactivation of SegWit is achieved with some very minor tweaks.”

Corallo shared a similar sentiment to Maxwell, noting that changing the SegWit activation threshold and implementing it in September would be highly impractical due to the need for adequate review and testing.

While Corallo and other Core development team and community members, including Blockstream CEO Adam Back, have expressed their optimism and enthusiasm for the bitcoin industry and mining community’s efforts to scale the bitcoin network, developers have long maintained that it is important to consult with Core developers and technical experts before deploying such a project.

Clarifying the recent controversy surrounding the exclusion of some Core developers and Blockstream executives, Back said:

“It was me who proposed that Samson Mow represent Blockstream at this NYC Scaling Conference, as he had gained a lot of experience at BTCC etc. Unfortunately, for some reason this did not work out and he was excluded during the conference. With this proposal, I personally hope that people can create positive energy for the Bitcoin ecosystem to collaborate towards the goal of activating SegWit and moving forward with the next phase of scaling plans, and look forward to reviewing and commenting on the scaling discussions.”