The Bitcoin Cash fiasco: a reorg or a 51 percent attack?
On May 15, 2019, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) implemented a system upgrade designed to support a number of scaling solutions. Shortly after the fork, there appeared to be a power struggle between miners looking to recuperate lost BCH, which became spendable after the upgrade. This has led to new debates over the centralization, security, and immutability of the BCH network.
Higher fees follow rising Bitcoin volumes
Bitcoin’s April rally helped push on-chain volume to a 10 month high, but despite the progress of scaling solutions, bitcoin transaction fees increased by almost 200%. What are the implications?
Segwit locking in on Bitcoin
On Wednesday morning around 10:40 UTC, the Bitcoin software upgrade known as SegWit will lock-in. Although a two-week waiting period follows before full activation, the lock-in makes it impossible for miners to change their minds about the upgrade without forfeiting their mining income. An upgrade process called BIP 9 governs how SegWit and other large, possibly contentious upgrades are made to the Bitcoin network. In this case, BIP 9 calls for 95% of miners to signal agreement for the upgrade within a 2016 block period, or roughly 2 weeks.
All roads lead to Segwit
There are currently three proposals for activating Segwit on Bitcoin — Segwit2x, BIP 91 "Segsignal," and BIP 148 "UASF." The first two are intended only for use by miners and the third is primarily being run by users. We’ll take a look at each one in turn and show they all use a very similar approach to achieving their shared goal. We’ll also look at the differences between them and see what effects they can have on one another.
UASF – Bitcoin’s emergency plan to enact SegWit
A full year after the code was released, Segregated Witness (SegWit) still has little chance of being adopted by Bitcoin miners. The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) includes a wide range of features, including larger block sizes.
Segwit adoption increasing, coming to Litecoin soon
Litecoin creator and Director of Engineering at Coinbase, Charlie Lee, recently held a meeting with several of the largest exchanges and mining pools that use Litecoin in China.
