The beginning is the end: After the segwit2x hard fork, nodes running the software were frozen

Although the segwit2x Bitcoin fork has been officially announced to be cancelled, there are still as many as 150 nodes still running the segwit2x code, and these nodes have now stopped accepting transaction blocks.

According to Bitnodes, 95 nodes are running 2x software and are stuck at block 494,782. According to CoinDance, another Bitcoin network data site, 154 Bitcoin nodes are running “btc1” software at press time.

This situation is very serious, especially since the main supporter of the segwit2x hard fork proposal, which initially received support from a large number of startups, miners and communities to expand the transaction capacity of the Bitcoin network, has already announced its abandonment on the project mailing list on November 8. However, despite the abandonment, dozens of nodes continue to run the latest version of the btc1 software.

Today’s network strike appears to be caused by a problem with the code used to prevent miners from producing blocks larger than 1MB, which would push nodes running segwit2x to their own chain. As the Slack channel discussed the issue more and more, segwit2x developer Jeff Garzik released a patch designed to mitigate the creation of larger transaction blocks (since the segwit2x fork network is unlikely to continue without strong hash power support).

While the Segwit2x fork itself will not proceed, today’s results also show a certain hostility emanating from those who support and oppose Segwit2x.

A particular point of contention is the exact block height that will activate the fork.

According to previous materials, the block height of the segwit2x hard fork activation is 494784. Developer Garzik criticized that this would lead to an "off-by-one" error. If executed, the nodes that planned to fork may be in trouble. In turn, Garizk believes that the operation of these codes is normal, except for the lack of computing power support.

According to previous reports by Babbitt, BitGO CTO Jameson Lopp posted on Twitter that every BTC1 (SegWit2X) node operator was screwed and they were frozen at block height 494782 - two blocks before the fork should have occurred. "

It remains to be seen whether some of the problematic nodes, some of which Bitdnodes data shows are hosted on hosting services from Amazon and Alibaba, will change their software.

So unless blocks larger than 1MB arrive, the nodes running this software will have to remain stuck.