‘Full Steam Ahead’ for Segwit2x, Developer Jeff Garzik Says

Segwit2x is going ahead as planned, according to its lead developer.

Revealed yesterday in an email posted to the project’s mailing list, Bloq co-founder and CEO Jeff Garzik said that he expects the planned hard fork, aimed compelling the network to embrace a 2 megabyte (MB) transaction block size, will take place sometime in the middle of next month.

Long planned, the news perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise. Despite ample backlash over the project, those involved have long emphasized they believe they have the necessary support to enact the change to the rules of the bitcoin network.

Garzik wrote:

“To state the obvious, everything is still full steam ahead for segwit2x upgrade in mid-November.”

As previously detailed by CoinDesk, Segwit2x is a scaling solution backed by a number of companies in the industry as well as a segment of the mining sector. Proponents say the effort will enable higher transaction throughput, building on the introduction of SegWit in August.

Although supported by some well-known startups, though, the initiative itself is contentious partly because it could lead to two competing variations of the bitcoin blockchain, each governed by different developer teams. This has sparked disagreements as to which network split will constitute “bitcoin” (versus another name or price ticker) in the wake of the fork.

Drama ensues

Still, even this simple update wasn’t without drama.

The message, which follows a status report in August, details how SegWit2x will run on a dated version of Bitcoin Core software. Garzik wrote that this decision stems from “instability and bugs” in newer versions, and he quickly moved to fan the flames of the debate.

Taking aim at the project’s open-source developer group, he specified: “Core’s bugs not ours.”

Elaborating on Twitter, Garzik said that he became aware of the bugs from following “the stream of bug reports and fixes” on the cryptocurrency’s Github.

The statements have sparked controversy across social media, with many pointing to what seems to be an absence of such problems in the software.

Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which acted as organizer for the SegWit2x proposal and has an ownership stake in Bloq.

Steam train via Shutterstock

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