Bitcoin network stress test to be held next week

In line with the ongoing debate on bitcoin block size, Coinwallet, a UK-based Bitcoin mining and wallet, conducted its "stress pre-test" for about half-an-hour earlier this week that resulted in a "2-day delay and a 50 MB backlog", according to Coinwallet CCE James Wilson.

Wilson also told Bitcoin Magazine that the company will be running a major stress test on the Bitcoin network on Thursday, September 10 starting at 10 a.m. GMT.

"The pre-test lasted only about 30 minutes and created a 2-day backlog. As you can imagine, September 10th will indeed be stressful", Wilson said. 

These stress tests aim to verify if the Bitcoin network can handle a stream of very small transactions that will act like a DDOS attack but many bitcoin enthusiasts see this as a "political" statement and CoinWallet's participation in the ongoing block size debate.

Two workshops on bitcoin scalability are to be held on September 12 and 13 "for Bitcoin's engineering and academic community" in Montreal, Canada. The workshops are being sponsored by a number of cryptocurrency companies, to try and find consensus on the best block size for bitcoin.