July is an interesting month for Bitcoin as it determines its scaling path through segwit (segregated witness). Two of most popular proposals to achieve this were:

UASF / BIP148 (requires 95% network acceptance)

Mechanism where the activation time of a soft fork occurs on a specified date enforced by full nodes, a concept sometimes referred to as the economic majority. A UASF requires a lot of industry support and coordination, which is good practice for eventual hard forks which requires even more industry coordination. In the past, a UASF was successfully carried out to activate the P2SH soft fork (BIP16). The UASF concept was combined with SegWit activation in the BIP148 proposal. — Segwit resources

Segwit2x (requires 80% network acceptance)

Is very similar proposal to BIP148, with few differences besides needed network acceptance percentage.

Segwit2x is initiated and executed by several big mining companies (participates New York Agreement) not Bitcoin core team. If activated successfully a hard fork is expected within few months that will increase block size to 8mb with 2mb non-segwit transaction capacity.

All in all both activate SegWit for bitcoin and are compatible, BIP 148 will become irrelevant if Segwit2x activates, only difference here is that hard-fork aimed at increasing block size where discussion will be needed from Bitcoin core and miners side, as well as weighting of risks associated to forking.

Graph above shows current (Jul 17, 2017) adoption of both proposals and by the looks of it Segwit2x is set to activate before August 1st therefore making UASF unneeded and avoiding dreaded chain split. We should know for sure around July 25–29th, but data looks promising and many doubt that BIP148 will be able to catch up and gain 95% needed for its adoption.

~ SC

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