The mining pool allows its users to vote for Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Classic or BIP100. However, those who do not vote (86%) will carry on mining Bitcoin Core blocks by default.

The possibility to vote for a block size solution was added by Slush Pool a week ago. Four options were proposed – Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Classic, BIP100 with automatic block increase to 8MB and “I don’t care”. Of these, Classic is by far the most popular solution, attracting more users than the other three options put together. However, an overwhelming majority of miners (86.02%) does not take part in voting. Their computers continue to mine Bitcoin Core.

This situation provoked an angry reaction from some Reddit users. One comment reads:

“It's like saying that anyone who does not vote in the presidential elections automatically votes for Hillary Clinton.”

The same person proposed Slush Pool to “distribute un-voted hashrate proportionally to the voted hashrate” urging them “to be fair.”

However, another Redditor pointed to the fact that “making changes can be a lot of work” so one should not criticise the mining pool for the ambiguous situation. If anybody is to be blamed, it is miners who are not used to voting despite being paid for that. Yet another Redditor argued that proportional distribution of un-voted hashrate will bring too much volatility because one or another option can become relatively more popular among those who vote. According to him, only when 51% has voted for a new client, default settings should be changed.

A representative of the mining pool answered the challenge:

“Core is default for non voters because of continuity: pool always mined "core" so sudden switch might upset miners who does not follow bitcoin news everyday.”

The pool also announced that information materials are being prepared for those miners who did not take a decision.

According to Blockchain.info, over the last four days Slush Pool accounted only for 2% of bitcoin hash rate. So whether it stays mostly with Core or switches to Classic, it won’t greatly change the balance. However, its decision may influence other mining pools.

Alexey Tereshchenko