THE DEBATE OVER BITCOIN EXPANSION(VI）

Collapse of the New York Consensus

In fact, when SegWit was activated, the New York Consensus SegWit2X had failed. SegWit2X was originally a compromise for Core supporters in order not to split the community. Before SegWit is activated, the expansion party can also use SegWit as a negotiation condition for 2M. Since SegWit has been activated, what do you need to exchange for hard fork 2M support? There is no exchangeable capital. If you insist on 2X, you can only split. Then the consensus foundation of "no division" will collapse. Therefore, the failure of the New York Consensus has become inevitable!_DJMINER

After SegWit was activated, faced with a tough attitude, control code base, official website and core forum supporters, coupled with fear of fork, the seemingly mainstream New York consensus began to collapse. On August 24th, Bitwala, the company that signed the New York Consensus, announced that it no longer supports the New York Consensus and opposes a hard fork from Core's blockchain version.

To alleviate the community's fear of fork, Jeff Garzik emphasized that SegWit2x's goal is to upgrade Bitcoin to become Bitcoin instead of creating a coin. In the face of the huge community pressure brought by the fear of fork, SegWit2X made another important compromise: the selective replay protection was added to the btc1 version of Github and it was recommended to write to the code base. This proposal has been criticized for being useless. This compromise and its failure is a very bad omen for SegWit2X.

At the end of August and early September, most companies that signed the New York Consensus still supported SegWit2X. On August 28, bitpay announced support for SegWit2X, and BTCC and Bitfury also indicated that they still support SegWit2X. But Slush Pool co-founder Marek Palatinus said they were reluctant to make a decision because of fear of a hard fork.

At this critical point, there have been repeated between supporting SegWit and expansion, and the F2Pool, which signed the New York Consensus, once again announced that he would send the electronic to the Bitcoin portal Coindesk. The mail claimed that "I don't support Segwit2x hard forks." Although the power pool's power share is in a rapid decline, as the largest mine pool ever, its position has an important influence. The collapse of the New York Consensus is accelerating.

On September 15th, Bitcoin Core 0.15.0 was officially released. SegWit2X nodes are not supported. The showdown time is up. All nodes must choose between Core and SegWit2X.

In opposition to SegWit2X, Core supporters launched the No2X campaign. Liteco coin founder Charli Lee opposed SegWit2X and announced on September 30 that he would like to change the 250BTC of SegWit2X to the 250BTC of No2X. Roger Ver, a staunch supporter of SegWit2X, announced the acceptance of the offer. And accepted the same offer of the other three, a total of 1000BTC.

After September 4, 2017, the domestic exchange suffered from Waterloo, and Bitfinex in Hong Kong became the largest exchange. In response to the upcoming bitcoin split, on October 5th, Bitfinex followed Viabtc's BCH fork futures, announcing the on-line fork currency futures bt1 (core version) and bt2 (SigWit2X version).

With the experience of BCH forks, many companies have a neutral attitude toward possible forks, announcing that they will protect the interests of users in the fork and recognize various forks. On October 8th Coinbase announced that it supports all bitcoins that SegWit2x hard forks, and will not announce the choice of naming before hard forks. SPV wallet Bread also indicated that the decision will be given to the user.

To this end, bitcoin official website Bitcoin.org publicly condemned the company that supports SegWit2X, warned of the risk of hard forks, and listed a “blacklist” covering many well-known companies around the world, including:

Abra, Bitcoin.com, BitPay, BitPesa, Blockchain.info, BTC.com (Bitland), Circle, Coinbase, Coins.ph, GoCoin, Jaxx, Luno, Ripo, Unocoin, Xapo, ANX, Bitex, bitFlyer, Bitso, BTCC (Bitcoin China), BTER.com, Coinbase, Coins.ph, CryptoFacilities, Korbit, Safello, SFOX, ShapeShift, 1Hash, Bitcoin.com, Bitfury, Bitmain (Bitland), Bixin.com (Coin Letter), Genesis Mining, ViaBTC, Bitangel.com, BitClub Network, Bloq, Civic, Decentral, Digital Currency Group, Filament, Genesis Global Trading, Grayscale Investments, MONI, OB1, Netki, Purse, Veem.

Bitcoin.org not only warns of the risk of stability caused by hard forks, but also emphasizes that once SegWit2X is hard forked, service providers that support SegWit2X "exit the Bitcoin system."_DJMINER

The end of the New York consensus

By the end of October, SegWit2X project leader Bitgo's Mike Belshe and main developer Jeff Garzik said that SegWit2X hard fork expansion is pushing forward according to the implementation of SegWit2X in mid-November. Companies have to prepare for the split plan, the most difficult of which is, once split, which chain and currency of Core0.15 and SegWit2X (BTC1) is named "Bitcoin"._DJMINER

On October 23, Coinbase issued an announcement stating that it would temporarily name SegWit2X as bitcoin2x. If the latter is widely accepted by "users", it will be named bitcoin. But quickly changed to "name the chain that is the most difficult to mine" Bitcoin. This change is not difficult to understand, because the "user" decision is a very vague concept, "drilling difficulty" is a more specific standard, in line with the white paper's longest chain principle. Bitpay, Shapeshift, Xapo, etc. also announced support for this standard. Their position was fiercely attacked by r/bitcoin users, so that Shapeshift CEO Erik Voorhess believed that he was being persecuted by r/bitcoin. BTCC CEO Bobby Lee and Coinable, Xapo and other companies also expressed support for SegWit2X. Li Qiyuan’s views were sharply criticized by his younger brother, Charlie Lee.

OpenBazaar, an e-commerce trading platform that was recognized as a Bitcoin killer application in early November, announced that it no longer supports the New York Consensus (SegWit2X), claiming that the New York Consensus was signed at the time to ensure that SegWit can be deployed as soon as possible. Civic's Vinny Lingham also announced his withdrawal from the New York Consensus on the grounds that he "received a death threat." Daniel Vogel, co-founder of another company that signed the New York deal, also claimed that SegWit2X support is declining. If the support rate is below 50%, this chain should not be dug.The withdrawal and vacillation of these enterprises indicates that the foundation of the New York Consensus is collapsing, and the New York Consensus is no longer mainstream.

On November 9, SegWit2X project leader BitGo CEO Mike Belshe announced the suspension of SegWit2X by email: "Unfortunately, it is obvious that we have not been able to establish enough block size upgrade consensus this time. Continue the current route may split the community and Blocking the development of Bitcoin. This is by no means the result of Segwit2x.” Xapo CEO Wences Casares, Bitland Wu Jihan, Bloq CEO Jeff Garzik, Blockchain CEO Peter Smith and Shapeshift CEO Erik Voorhees.

The New York Consensus SegWit2X officially ended.

The root cause of the failure of the New York Consensus (SegWit2X) is the nature of its fragile compromise, which caters to the majority of “no split + expansion”, but does not really shake the community foundation of the Core against block expansion, but instead loses the negotiation card on SegWit. . After the deployment of SegWit, the passive situation of “expansion” must be “split” and eventually lost the support of the community.

The BCH born on August 1, 2017 has little impact on the failure of SegWit2X. Only those who are steadfast in the expansion, a few who believe that the differences are irreconcilable, can accept the split, and the fragile compromise that anticipates the New York consensus will fail, have shifted from the New York Consensus to supporting BCH at the beginning of the BCH. (The author Liu Chang uses this view, but unfortunately Weibo has not been able to reach the relevant opinions.) And most of the expansionists including Wu Jihan, Roger, Yang Haipo, etc., just use BCH as a backup to prevent the failure of the New York consensus. Program. Jiang Zhuoer clearly expressed his support for BCH as a competitive currency, but did not want BCH to distract the power of the New York Consensus.

Don't forget that the basis of the New York Consensus is to "expand" under the premise of "no division (no fork)." So the majority of New York consensus supporters are against BCH. For example, Xapo, which supports the New York Consensus to the last famous wallet merchant, announced that it did not support BCH after the birth of BCH, and converted all BCHs for the user's fork to BTC. This process caused the BCH price to drop by more than 30%.

In fact, during the gradual decline of the New York Consensus from mid-August to early November, BCH did not receive more support, and its price continued to drop from a maximum of 758 US dollars on August 19 to about 320 US dollars in late October, with a close decline. 58%. Only after the beginning of November, the New York consensus collapsed, the BCH price began to rise. On November 9th, SegWit2X announced that it would stop in the three days from November 12, and the price of BCH soared from 625 US dollars to 1,600 US dollars, up 156%. The main reason is that the New York Consensus failed, forcing the minority who can accept the fork and insist on expansion to turn to support BCH. The backup solution becomes the only option for block expansion.

After the failure of the New York Consensus, for most of the supporters, the block does not expand Bitcoin and it is still Bitcoin, and will not support BCH. Only a handful of steadfast expansionists believe that BTC has deviated from the market and the dream of Nakamoto, changed the development route, and turned to BCH. This is a veritable “minority”. From birth to the present, the number of BCH companies and the size of the community are much smaller than BTC. Therefore, it is not the birth of BCH that led to the success or failure of the New York Consensus, and the failure of the New York Consensus created the BCH._DJMINER