Bitcoin miners are not against SegWit, but are against SegWit for Bitcoin Core

The Bitcoin core development team, Bitcoin core, is the maintainer of the Bitcoin protocol. It has made great contributions to the development of Bitcoin and holds a high position in the community.

However, in the early days of Bitcoin expansion, the Bitcoin core development team had internal conflicts and struggles, and the main conflicts focused on the issue of Bitcoin main chain expansion.

This conflict directly led to the split of the core members, even to the point of personal attacks. Blockstream is a company that mainly studies sidechain expansion and aims to expand the functions of the Bitcoin protocol layer. After the split, the Bitcoin core team was controlled by the commercial company because the core employees of Blockstream came from the Bitcoin core team.

Bitcoin miners are important participants in the entire Bitcoin industry. Image source: Golden Finance

Bitcoin miners have always been important participants in the entire Bitcoin industry, maintaining the development of the industrial chain ecosystem.

In the circulation and trading of Bitcoin, China occupies half of the entire Bitcoin market. China is also the country with the largest number of Bitcoin mining participants.

Due to the demand for electricity, large-scale Bitcoin mines in China are mostly located in relatively remote areas such as Sichuan Province and Inner Mongolia. Bitcoin miners can be regarded as the hardest-working "workers" in the industry.

Before the issue of Bitcoin expansion was not particularly urgent, Bitcoin miners considered the hard manifestation of mining costs, such as computing power, electricity costs, maintenance, currency prices and other factors. However, most Bitcoin miners do not consider the size of the block, that is, the issue of Bitcoin expansion, and of course they do not consider a series of detailed routes such as how Bitcoin should be forked reasonably. Investment and return should be the focus of Bitcoin miners.

Bitcoin miners are naturally entitled to strong voice and voting rights. Image source: Golden Finance

Whether from the perspective of market development or technical theory, Bitcoin miners should inherently have a strong voice and voting power.

As the number of participants and followers in the Bitcoin industry continues to increase, Bitcoin expansion has evolved into a serious community dispute. When Bitcoin miners gradually realized that they needed to participate in the expansion dispute, the Bitcoin core development team Bitcoin core attempted to marginalize the rights of Bitcoin miners and even control the Bitcoin miners' right to speak.

Although the Bitcoin core team, which comes from a technical background, has made great efforts to maintain the Bitcoin protocol, this team cannot represent coin holders and miners, or even ordinary participants, and core cannot be used as a synonym for Bitcoin.

For Bitcoin miners, the marginalization of the main chain means a reduction in income. The faction represented by the Bitcoin core team supports the 1M block + lightning network expansion method (SW). Bitcoin core is firmly opposed to increasing the size of the main chain.

Since the transfer speed of small blocks on the main chain is very slow, it directly leads to the need for participants to transfer transactions on the side chain, which marginalizes the main chain and makes it exist in name only.

The idea of ​​Bitcoin miners themselves is to choose to increase the size of the main chain blocks when faced with the necessary decision of Bitcoin expansion.

Bitcoin miners oppose Segwit by the Bitcoin core team. Image source: Golden Finance

On the other hand, Bitcoin miners are not against Segwit, but against Segwit of the Bitcoin core team, and against the expansion route that does not increase the size of the main chain.

From a technical perspective, the practicality and innovation of Segregated Witness are beyond doubt, otherwise miners would not sign the Hong Kong Consensus (the Hong Kong Consensus is a compromise that increases the main chain block to 2M while utilizing the Lightning Network).

The Hong Kong consensus was aborted after the Bitcoin core team defaulted. So some industry insiders pointed out that why the Bitcoin core team must insist on not having large blocks, perhaps because the expansion of the main chain will directly lead to the marginalization of the lightning network, affecting the core interests of the core team.

In the community debate, as long as the miners support large blocks, they will be criticized by the Segwit side for excessively pursuing their own interests, and their words will be taken out of context. It is unreasonable for a party controlled by a commercial company to oppose the commercial interests of the other party.