Classic hashrate has more than halved in last two days. peak 120 PH, now 53. So we know miners are either turning classic off, or playing around with switching between classic and core. If miners are switching off, this tells us most classic miners have operating costs that puts them at the barely profitable horizon for current network and price. So they’re small time, no big big pools, no big farms.

If miners are playing around with switching… I’m not sure what that tells us. I wonder if there’s a way to determine how much is necessity (costs) and how much is fooling around. Maybe closely observing pools.

http://nodecounter.com/graphs.php

Or maybe a classic pool went away, which disorganized things temporarily.

Anyone know what happened?

Theories welcome!

UPDATES:

Solex1 noted that slush pool seems to have stopped mining classic blocks.

In private communication from Alex Kravets: “Upcoming launch of BIP9-based softforks on May 1st would be affected by classic version numbers.”

“Classic adoption before SegWit is impossible, SeqWit in July after full switchover to May 1st soft fork”

I gather that bip9 and bip9-dependent softforks may have prompted slush and others to defer classic support, while the dust settles. Which is to say, while classic catches up to bip9.

Classic has indicated support for segwit, and indeed most of the core roadmap, other than keeping size fixed. So, if miners support classic “all else equal” this type of concern would postpone things temporarily, but not permanently.

Assuming classic continues backporting to play ball with the important pieces of the core roadmap, of course.

ThomasZander throws some doubt on above theory claiming classic supported bip9 all along (unverified by me, just passing along): “Ehm, classic was the first to support and roll out BIP9. Thats how the classic version number is made. (see bip109, it refers to bip9). So it has done so form months now.

If it’s not compatible anymore, then Core intentionally changed bip9 afterwards.”