The ongoing Bitcoin block size debate is causing a fair bit of controversy and concern within and outside of the Bitcoin community. Even though everybody wants to see an overwhelming consensus support for either Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin Classic, a lot of the “voting power” lies with the Chinese mining pools. Whereas a few people misinterpreted support for Bitcoin Classic by F2Pool and HaoBTC, it turns out the final verdict still far away.

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Overeager People Misinterpret F2Pool Statement

Similar to just about any Bitcoin community member, all of the mining pools powering the digital currency ecosystem would love nothing more than to see a clear path of development. The Bitcoin block size debate has been going on for several months now, and it has taken far too long to come to a proper consensus regarding this matter.

Things only become even more worrying when certain individuals paraphrase certain statements by a Chinese mining pool operator. F2Pool, which controls roughly 25% of the entire Bitcoin network hashpower, welcomed the options proposed by Bitcoin Classic developers. But at the same time, a few people saw this as a vote of confidence for that particular Bitcoin proposal, and how F2Pool would support Bitcoin Classic when push came to shove.

Nothing could be further from the truth, however, as F2Pool never openly indicated their support for Bitcoin Classic. Trouble start on Reddit when a post by F2Pool operators was looked upon as a way to enforce Bitcoin Classic upon the people mining there.Furthermore, that message clearly stated how the mining pool “welcomed” the Bitcoin Classic solution, but never mentioned how they will be actively supporting it.

The list of Bitcoin Classic supporters has grown quite long and includes Antpool, HaoBTC, Genesis Mining, Bitfury, and various other mining companies. However, most of the big mining pools are either in favor of Bitcoin Core or remain on the fence until we get closer to reaching a decision.

It is in the best interest of every Bitcoin mining pool out there to keep an open mind towards both Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Classic. Even though history is not favorable towards solutions that are not Bitcoin Core, it is ultimately up to the entire community to determine which solution has their preference. No one is knocking down the efforts by either project, as they both have their merits. If only all of that development work were put into one solution everybody could agree upon; things would look far better by now.

Hard Fork, Soft Fork, Forking For All

There’s no denying the Bitcoin block size will need to be increased, as even the Chinese mining pools are in agreement with that statement. Whether this will happen through a hard fork or soft fork, remains to be seen, though. F2Pool feels hard forking would be the best option, as Segregated Witness is – technically speaking – a dirty hack of the Bitcoin code. This would not do proper justice to the technological change segwit brings.

Soft forking is the safest option as it would not necessarily require every Bitcoin node on the network to upgrade in time, whereas a hard fork would. But at the same time, the Bitcoin community is well aware of which choices lie ahead, and hard forking the code should not lead to catastrophic events by any means. Bitcoin is over seven years old now, and there should be no more handholding when a major update occurs.

In the end, it all comes down to getting things done in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Not just to show the entire community developers are capable of pulling off these large changes, but also to put the mainstream media blasphemy to bed once and for all. Even though Bitcoin is getting a lot of media attention, not all the news is positive so far. Hard forking Bitcoin in a successful manner would show the world this digital currency is here to say, regardless of what others might want you to believe.