Bitcoin Block Size Expansion Controversy: BIP100 vs BIP101

The debate over Bitcoin block expansion has become increasingly heated. Eight industry leaders have issued a joint statement, pledging to support the implementation of the 'BIP101' proposal by December 2015. They are BitPay CEO Stephan Pair, Blockchain.info CEO Peter Smith, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, Circle President Sean Neville, Kncminer CEO Sam Cole, Bitnet CEO John McDonnell, Xapo CEO Wences Casares and Bitgo CEO Mike Belshe.

On the mining pool side, three mining pools (including F2Pool) that account for 25% of the total network computing power have signed and voted in support of the implementation of the 'BIP100' proposal. Then some readers will ask, what are BIP100 and BIP101, and what is the difference between them?

BIP is the abbreviation of Bitcoin Improvement Proposal , which means "Bitcoin Improvement Proposal" in Chinese.

BIP100 : Through a hard fork, the static 1MB block size limit is removed and a new floating block size limit is added with a floating value of 1MB and an upper limit of 32MB .

The test blockchain hard fork will be conducted in September 2015, and the main chain hard fork will be conducted on January 11, 2016. The way to change the 1MB limit is similar to BIP 34, and 90% of the blocks in 12,000 blocks (three months) need to support BIP100.

BIP101 : The initial block size limit of Bitcoin is 8MB, and then the limit doubles every two years until the block reaches 8GB limit in 2036. The trigger condition is that when more than 750 blocks in the most recent 1000 blocks are blocks with the BIP101 version number, the conditions for hard fork expansion can be met. There will be a two-week buffer time, and the time to generate a large block will not be earlier than 2016-01-11 00:00:00 UTC.

Below is a joint statement from eight industry leaders:

Our engagement to date has been about listening, researching, and testing. We believe the work is done and it is time to communicate our views in a clear and transparent way.

After long debate among core developers, miners, our own technical team, and other participants in the industry, we believe that increasing the block size limit is necessary.

We support the implementation of BIP101. BIP101 and 8MB blocks have been supported by the majority of miners, and we believe that it is time for the industry to unite to support this proposal.
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Our company will be ready to support larger blocks by December 2015, and we will have the code running to support it.

We are committed to supporting the integration of BIP101 into our software and systems by December 2015, and we encourage others to join us.

Signature:

The BIP100 plan has also been supported by three mining pools, namely f2pool, Kano pool and Bitclub.

In terms of current computing power, the three mining pools account for about 25% of the total network, and the computing power supporting the BIP101 solution is much less. Previously, F2Pool stated that BitcoinXT is a copycat coin, so they will promote the integration of 'BIP100' into Bitcoin Core.

The relationship between BIP101 and BitcoinXT

Speaking of BIP101, some readers may be confused. Isn't BIP101 BitcoinXT? No, the two cannot be simply equated. The so-called BitcoinXT is another "forked" Bitcoin software that uses the BIP101 rules. In the BitcoinXT software, Mike Hearn's dispute rules are also included. Similarly, Bitcoin Core may also use the BIP101 rules. So these eight industry leaders are not directly supporting BitcoinXT. Among them, BitPay CEO Stephan Pair has made it clear that BitPay supports Bitcoin Core that uses the BIP101 rules.

As early as June, Mikael Wang, the current software development director of Bitcoin China, said in an interview with CoinTelegraph:

“The Bitcoin China mining pool will not be running Bitcoin XT, but we look forward to this patch being incorporated into the Bitcoin Core software.”

It seems that the Bitcoin block should be expanded, and the community has reached a consensus, but which method is reasonable? Welcome to express your opinions.

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