OKCoin Bitcoin Exchange Bitcoin China Supports BIP 100

Dear Bitcoin Community,

The debate over blockchain size has reached a climax recently, with many in the community speaking out in support of BIP 100 or BIP 101. We have been discussing this topic in depth over the past 48 hours, and now it is time to share BTCChina's perspective. We agree with Jeff Garzik's BIP 100 proposal. As the only Bitcoin company that provides three services (exchange, wallet and mining pool) at the same time, we are in a unique position to observe this debate from a different perspective. At the same time, as the first Bitcoin exchange in China and the longest-running Bitcoin exchange in the world, we feel a deep sense of responsibility to Bitcoin users around the world and Bitcoin itself.

BIP 101 has gained a lot of strong support recently. It was an easy choice to join many important members of the Bitcoin community in voting for BIP 101. We respect the views of Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn, who have helped to bring the block size debate to the forefront. But we agree with the general consensus that 8MB blocks are the right choice; BTCChina and other major mining pool operators in China publicly supported this decision in June.

By operating one of the largest mining pools in the world, BTCChina has experienced first-hand the problems caused by the orphan block rate and the risks of blockchain forks. So our view is that today's Internet, whether in China or the world, is not ready for unlimited, automatically increasing block sizes. The global network of Bitcoin miners and mining pools requires extremely high levels of network connectivity to process large-capacity blocks in a timely manner. If the block size is increased too quickly, the orphan block rate will definitely increase, putting small miners and mining pools at a disadvantage. And as the risk of a major fork increases significantly, it will undoubtedly cause great damage to Bitcoin. In addition, leaving aside the debate between BIP 100 and BIP 101, the current Bitcoin protocol already has an inherent limit of 32 MB blocks. In other words, the automatic doubling BIP 101 solution neither addresses nor overcomes this limitation; nor does it provide a solution for exceeding 32MB blocks. For these technical reasons, we firmly believe that BIP 100 is the more responsible choice.

Once BIP 100 is accepted, we will vote for a 2 MB block size limit and a mid-term goal of 8 MB. BIP 100 will allow us to achieve this goal gradually while providing two key advantages:

We encourage all Bitcoin community members to support BIP 100 by 1) increasing the block size immediately to help alleviate any short-term issues, and 2) giving us ample time to study the impact of the block size increase on the network and develop long-term solutions if necessary.

If consensus cannot be reached soon, we are fortunate to be able to continue the discussion at the Scaling Bicoin conference in Montreal this September. BTC China will sponsor this conference and will continue to support any positive discussions and dialogues related to Bitcoin.

As your Bitcoin company, BTCChina is committed to continuing to support the best path for Bitcoin development as part of our mission.

Bobby Lee
CEO, Bitcoin China