Segwit2x Working Group to Implement Bitcoin’s New York Consensus Code, Jeff Garzik to Participate

Recently, foreign media bitcoin.com reported that a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) written by Calvin Rechner has been submitted to the Bitcoin developer mailing list, while Bitcoin developer and Bloq CEO Jeff Garzik has launched another plan to combine Segregated Witness (Segwit) and 2MB block expansion. On May 30, Mr. Garzik explained in detail to the Bitcoin community his current views on the issue of Bitcoin expansion.

The issue of Bitcoin's scalability has been the subject of heated discussions for many years, and there are currently a variety of different solutions within the community, such as alternative versions of Bitcoin code, user-activated soft forks (UASF), extension blocks, emergent consensus, and the recent Segwit2MB idea (also known as the New York Consensus) proposed by Barry Silbert.

It is reported that the New York Consensus Agreement is based on the Segwit-2MB solution proposed by Sergio Demian Lerner, chief scientist of Root Chain (RSK). In addition, Hilbert claimed that 56 companies and 84% of the computing power of the entire network have supported this solution.

Garzik has recently been contributing to a solution called "Consensus SegWit2x signaling on bit 4," and the code for the solution has been published on Github. As of press time, several developers have been discussing and reviewing the code. There are also many developers who disagree with the overall concept of the proposal or some of its contents, while there are also some who support the compromise idea.

On May 30, Garzik published a blog post titled “A Personal Letter to the Bitcoin Community.”

(Jeff Garzik)

“An entirely foreseeable and inevitable outcome (skyrocketing transaction fees and the network reaching maximum capacity) has now occurred, as predicted,” Garzik explained.

“Despite years of community expansion plans, Bitcoin’s base block size has not increased, and high transaction fees have driven away many applications and some users from Bitcoin. The inability to expand the temporary DOS limit (block size limit) will directly cause measurable, negative economic consequences.”

Measurable Data and Ending Conspiracy Theories

Garzik also said that it doesn’t matter who plays a specific role, what matters is that the block size has not increased.

“This Segwit2x working group has a specific charter and a specific public goal: Segwit + 2MB blocksize. The community should judge these efforts based on results.”

Garzik concluded by saying that he hopes the community can be judged by looking at "their actions and producing measurable results," which he believes is far superior to resorting to personal attacks and spreading conspiracy theories. "To all of you who want to make the Bitcoin community a better and more positive place, I ask you to start here: be kind to each other and let's build good code," Garzik added.

Opportunity to provide feedback and help improve

The blog post has been submitted to multiple Bitcoin forums, some of which were submitted by Garzik himself. Of course, some people don’t like this idea, while others support this compromise expansion solution. Eric Lombrozo, a staunch supporter of the user-activated soft fork solution, commented:

"This cannot be fixed. I will continue to support BIP148 (UASF)."

However, DCG founder Barry Silbert disagrees with Lombrozo's statement.

“Can’t be fixed?” Sibert responded. “They just put the code on GitHub so people can provide feedback and make improvements.”

It is still hard to say what the result of Bitcoin expansion will be and whether the community will support the Segwit2MB proposal. Nevertheless, it seems that Bitcoin is one step closer to expansion.