ViaBTC, the world’s sixth largest mining pool, tests Bitcoin Unlimited

Chinese Bitcoin mining pool ViaBTC has decided to test Bitcoin Unlimited. This is an important step for mining pool operators and marks a step forward in the development of Bitcoin block capacity.

ViaBTC: "We support big blocks"

ViaBTC is the sixth largest mining pool in the world, so its decision is influential. The mining pool is fairly new, having been established for less than two months.

Despite its youth, ViaBTC has grown rapidly and has quickly become one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools in the world. Most of its growth has occurred in the last month.

In fact, according to a Reddit post last month, the mining pool’s total hashrate increased from 3% to 10% in just 24 hours. At the time of writing, the pool’s maximum hashrate is 120P/s.

VibBTC supports large blocks and has publicly tweeted in support of increasing block size. However, despite its support for large blocks, it currently runs Bitcoin Core and mines on this client.

Bitcoin Unlimited has a bright future

While this action by the mining pool cannot be seen as a vote for other clients, ViaBTC’s attempt to run Bitcoin Unlimited and its support for large blocks is a good thing for alternative clients.

Then the good news continued. Bitcoin Unlimited recently received a donation of $500,000, which prompted the project team to become an official non-profit organization.

The debate over Bitcoin blocks is the most polarizing issue in the Bitcoin community. Although the community has maintained the 1MB limit from a historical safety perspective, this consensus has recently come under some threat, with more and more people beginning to support larger blocks.

Since 2014, the debate over block size has become increasingly heated, and many people believe that the final solution is related to the survival of Bitcoin. Supporters of large blocks believe that the current 1MB block size limits the scalability of Bitcoin and the network will fail when demand increases. Supporters of small blocks worry that increasing the block size will lead to centralization and make Bitcoin unsafe.

ViaBTC’s decision to test Bitcoin Unlimited as a viable scaling solution is another sign that support for larger blocks is growing.