HONG KONG — 23 OCTOBER 2017 — Gatecoin will not be supporting the upcoming SegWit2x (B2X) hard fork in November due to the lack of two-way transaction replay attack protection coded into this proposed software “upgrade.”

NOT supporting B2X means that we will:

NOT distribute any B2X to our clients

NOT process any B2X sent to our bitcoin wallet addresses

NOT list any B2X coin on our exchange

Therefore, Gatecoin clients hoping to claim newly minted B2X coins equivalent to their bitcoin holdings at the time of the hard fork, will need to withdraw their bitcoin from our exchange at least 12 hours before the hard fork occurs at block 494,784 (expected sometime in November, exact date TBC).

We will however be running B2X nodes in case the software’s developers decide to add replay attack protection in the future.

SegWit2x FAQ:

What is SegWit2x (B2X)?

SegWit2x (B2X) was proposed with the aim of settling the bitcoin scaling debate once and for all during a meeting of bitcoin industry participants (Gatecoin was not part of the discussions) held in New York in May 2017.

As part of this “New York Agreement” (NYA) the signatories promised to ensure that they would support an increase in the block size limit from 1MB to 2MB (and up to 8MB) within three months after the lock-in of Segregated Witness (SegWit).

This was supposed to keep both sides of the bitcoin debate (those advocating SegWit vs. those pushing for bigger blocks) happy. However, B2X has been criticized by Bitcoin Core, the bitcoin network’s main open-source development team, which cites the lack of replay attack protection as a major concern.

What is the SegWit2x (B2X) hard fork ?

At block 494,784, this B2X software will activate on bitcoin clients running version BTC1. This will make BTC1 clients incompatible with all other bitcoin clients that are not running the B2X code. As there has been widespread rejection of the B2X proposal there will very likely be a chain split or hard fork, as was the case with the Bcash hard fork in August.

What is two-way transaction replay attack protection?

This prevents you from “double spending” your coins after the hard fork. Without replay protection, new transactions will be equally valid on both the bitcoin blockchain and the B2X blockchain as they will be identical to one another. This means that any new bitcoin or B2X transaction can be copied or “replayed” from one chain to the other, hence the term “replay attack.”

To prevent this from happening, B2X should update their software so that new transactions are valid on one chain but not the other. This would be known as replay attack protection. Bcash successfully implemented this as part of their chain split in August and is why Gatecoin was able to support it.

How can I claim my B2X if not from Gatecoin?

We highly recommend transferring your bitcoin to an external wallet address before the hard fork if you would like to claim your B2X coins. Check with any specific bitcoin wallet providers or other exchanges that you use to see if they will support the distribution of B2X coins. Just make sure that any wallet or exchange service has provided enough protection against replay attacks.

How can I find out more?

If you are a Gatecoin client and have more questions regarding the B2X hard fork please email support@gatecoin.com.

Thank you for your cooperation,

The Gatecoin Team