Bitcoin F2Pool: Determined to activate Segregated Witness and will not support UASF

After weeks of careful consideration, F2Pool, one of the world’s leading mining pools, has finally made up its mind to support Bitcoin and Litecoin to activate Bitcoin Core’s Segregated Witness (SegWit).

Wang Chun, the owner of F2Pool, announced the results of an internal miner survey, which showed that 56% of F2Pool miners support the Segregated Witness solution.

Twitter content: The voting results show that 56% of miners support the Segregated Witness solution, while the support rate for UASF is not optimistic. Therefore, we decided to respect the choice of miners. F2Pool will soon activate Segregated Witness on Bitcoin and Litecoin. Thank you.

Supports Segregated Witness, but not UASF

Considering the attitude and choice of miners, Wang Chun and the mining team of F2Pool believe that supporting Segregated Witness is a better choice for both F2Pool and the Bitcoin community. More importantly, Wang Chun does not want the community to go down the path of User Activated Soft Fork (UASF), which essentially eliminates the influence of miners in the activation of Segregated Witness.

Samson Mow, former BTCC executive director and Blockstream CSO, said that Wang Chun and the F2Pool team made a wise choice: strengthening the anti-UASF camp and advocating for Segregated Witness to the community.

Mow said:

“Wang Chun is a smart man. SW will not be activated without the support of Antpool, ViaBTC, BTC.TOP, GBMiners, Bitclub, CANOE and Bitcoin.com. Therefore, Wang Chun can show his support now and express his opinion against UASF at the same time.”

Why do mining pools like F2Pool oppose UASF? One important reason is that the mechanism behind UASF allows node operators to activate it at a certain point in time without the support of miners and the hash power behind them. For example, once UASF, also known as BIP 148 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal), has enough community support, it can be activated before November 15.

Since UASF completely ignores the rights of miners, mining pools and some companies like F2Pool will choose to oppose it.

A Segregated Witness block has been mined

Wang Chun said earlier on April 15 that F2Pool has already started mining SegWit blocks. If F2Pool puts all its hashrate into supporting SegWit (currently 9% support, according to a source), miner support is likely to exceed 30% by the weekend.

Just four days ago, Wang Chun said on Twitter: He strongly opposes Bitcoin Segregated Witness.

On April 12, Wang Chun tweeted:

“SegWit is going to be a disaster. I will not support Bitcoin SegWit because I am a Bitcoiner. I have tried my best to love Core, but Core does not love me. I now know that Charlie Lee has a backup plan called UASF.”

Did F2Pool really choose to support SegWit for the benefit of miners and the community, or did it just choose to support SegWit because it was the best way to oppose UASF? We don’t know.