{"id":23219,"date":"2017-09-13T00:58:59","date_gmt":"2017-09-13T00:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe62b01526c3"},"modified":"2017-09-13T00:58:59","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T00:58:59","slug":"no2x-breaking-bitcoin-shows-no-love-segwit2x-hard-fork-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/no2x-breaking-bitcoin-shows-no-love-segwit2x-hard-fork-paris","title":{"rendered":"NO2X: Breaking Bitcoin Shows No Love for the SegWit2x Hard Fork in Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as a safe hard fork,\u201d Electrum<\/a> lead developer Thomas Voegtlin corrected an audience member at the Breaking Bitcoin<\/a> conference in Paris last weekend. \u201cI would recommend to have replay protection, of course,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Community support for SegWit2x, the Bitcoin scaling proposal<\/a> spearheaded by Barry Silbert\u2019s Digital Currency Group<\/a>, was virtually absent in Paris. Whenever the \u201c2x\u201d part of the New York Agreement<\/a> was discussed in the French capital, speakers and visitors overwhelmingly considered it a risk to defend against \u2014 not a proposal to help succeed.<\/p>\n

Electrum users, for example, will not blindly follow hash power in case of a chain-split, Voegtlin explained throughout his talk; instead, they\u2019ll be able to choose which side of such a split they want to be on. And importantly, the lightweight wallet will implement security measures to prevent users from accidentally spending funds on both chains: \u201creplay protection\u201d that seems unlikely to be implemented on a protocol level if SegWit2x does fork off.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are ready,\u201d Voegtlin said. \u201cIf [SegWit2x] doesn\u2019t include replay protection, the fork detection we have in Electrum will be useful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Breaking Bitcoin<\/h3>\n

Inspired by<\/a> the successful Scaling Bitcoin<\/a> conference format, the French Bitcoin community hosted the first edition of Breaking Bitcoin two blocks from the Eiffel Tower last weekend. Bitcoin developers, academics and other technical-minded Bitcoiners gathered for a diverse program, but with the common denominator being Bitcoin\u2019s security.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the past two years, the Bitcoin community has been obsessing with scale and scalability,\u201d Kevin Loaec, managing director at Chainsmiths<\/a> and co-organizer of the event, told Bitcoin Magazine<\/em>. \u201cBut I\u2019m not so worried about scale, I\u2019m worried about mining centralization, a lack of privacy and fungibility … these kinds of things. As an industry we need to recognize there are more challenges than just scalability; hopefully this conference reflects that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whereas the first Scaling Bitcoin conference two years ago was a very specific reaction to a looming block size limit increase hard fork \u2014 then put forth by Bitcoin XT<\/a> \u2014 this wasn\u2019t necessarily the motivation behind Breaking Bitcoin. Yet, once again, a controversial hard fork is looming on the horizon. This time imbedded in the BTC1 implementation developed by Bloq<\/a> co-founder Jeff Garzik, the New York Agreement\u2019s SegWit2x is scheduled to increase Bitcoin\u2019s \u201cbase block size limit\u201d to two megabytes by November \u2014 an incompatible protocol change that could split the Bitcoin network in two.<\/p>\n

And it did not take much to recognize how unpopular the proposal was in Paris. Perhaps most vividly, Italian Bitcoin startup ChainSide<\/a> led a protest campaign by distributing NO2X stickers; the Twitter hashtag was proudly added as a piece of flair to the by now well-known Make Bitcoin Great Again and UASF hats. And voices critical of the project \u2014 like Voegtlin and his call for replay protection \u2014 could consistently count on rounds of applause. From a technical perspective, the proposal is often considered \u2014 quite frankly \u2014 to be reckless.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, SegWit2x [\u2026] was designed to effectively be as disruptive to the minority chain,\u201d MyRig<\/a> engineer and BIP91<\/a> author James Hilliard said on stage during the miner panel.<\/p>\n

SegWit2x: The Arguments<\/h3>\n

Arguments against the 2x hard fork are diverse.<\/p>\n

Perhaps its biggest problem, SegWit2x currently lacks basic safety measures to prevent unsuspecting users from losing funds. This includes, most importantly, the aforementioned replay protection, but a new address format would be similarly helpful.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the three-month lead time for this specific hard fork is considered extremely short \u2014 assuming the goal is to prevent a chain-split in the first place. \u201cIf you ask any of the developers, they will typically want to see 18 months or two years lead time, for something with as wide an impact on all the software and hardware out there as a hard fork,\u201d Blockstream<\/a> co-founder and Hashcash<\/a> inventor Dr. Adam Back noted during a Q&A session.<\/p>\n

And if the chain does split into different networks and currencies \u2014 one following the current Bitcoin protocol and one adopting the hard fork \u2014 the question becomes which of the two gets to use the name \u201cBitcoin.\u201d So far, proponents of the SegWit2x hard fork have shown no willingness to pick a new name.<\/p>\n

This branding issue, Bitcoin Core<\/a> contributor and Ciphrex<\/a> co-founder Eric Lombrozo pointed out, provides yet another point of controversy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy personal opinion is that whomever is proposing the change, the onus is on them to demonstrate widespread support,\u201d Lombrozo said during his talk on protocol changes. \u201cThe people that want to keep status quo don\u2019t need to show anything. It\u2019s the people who want to change the stuff that actually need to demonstrate there is widespread support.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for now, not everyone is convinced that SegWit2x does indeed have this level of support \u2014 or anything close to it. While several large mining pools<\/a>, as well as a significant number of companies, have signed on to the New York Agreement, this agreement was itself drafted without any feedback from Bitcoin\u2019s technical community nor \u2014 even more important \u2014 a reliable gauge of user sentiment. <\/p>\n

And while some Bitcoin companies claim to represent their customers, this is \u2014 once again \u2014 not taken for granted by everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne debate I want to draw attention to,\u201d venture capitalist Alyse Killeen pointed out, \u201cis the debate whether businesses speak for their users. I think this is probably a debate you would only see now in this space because it\u2019s pretty well established that businesses outside of this space do not speak for users, but it\u2019s a debate we still have in our community. Of course they don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

NO2X<\/h3>\n

If Breaking Bitcoin in Paris can be considered at all representative of SegWit2x\u2019s community support \u2014 which, it should be noted, is not necessarily the case \u2014 the proposal will face an uphill battle to be widely accepted in November.<\/p>\n

Indeed, some signatories of the agreement are not so sure about the hard fork anymore: Bitwala<\/a> and F2Pool<\/a> have publicly backed out of the agreement. And, during a mining panel in Paris, Bitfury<\/a> CIO Alex Petrov ever so slightly opened the door to potentially withdrawing support as well, if both the original and the 2x chain manage to survive.<\/p>\n

In fact, it\u2019s not just that contentious hard forks are considered a threat to be defended against by Bitcoin\u2019s technical community. It goes beyond that.<\/p>\n

In the words of Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song, at the conclusion of his opening talk of the event:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat doesn\u2019t kill Bitcoin makes it stronger. And conferences like this prove that we\u2019re getting better at this. We\u2019re getting immunized to all these hard forks, and it\u2019s creating a better Bitcoin as a result, and that\u2019s a very good thing. We\u2019re securing against a lot of these attacks, and figuring out ways to mitigate these threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of Federico Tenga<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as a safe hard fork,\u201d Electrum lead developer Thomas Voegtlin corrected an audience member at the Breaking Bitcoin conference in Paris last weekend. \u201cI would recommend to have replay protection, of course,\u201d he added. Community support for SegWit2x, the Bitcoin scaling proposal spearheaded by Barry Silbert\u2019s Digital Currency Group, was virtually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2509,"featured_media":23220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[592,3554,1079,3330],"class_list":["post-23219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technical","tag-conferences","tag-paris","tag-segwit","tag-segwit2x"],"author_data":{"id":2509,"name":"Aaron van Wirdum","nicename":"aaron-van-wirdum","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/aaron-van-wirdum-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/no2x-breaking-bitcoin-shows-no-love-for-the-segwit2x-hard-fork-in-paris.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}