Support for BIP 100 Bitcoin Block rises

The bitcoin community is confronted with one of the most historic decisions. The problem at hand is that the bitcoin network is running out of spare capacity, which has created two increasingly divided camps with one favouring raising the limit and the other opposing it.

Bitcoin developers, Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen, lead the group that favours raising the capacity of the network. They argue that in order to become a mainstream technology, bitcoin needs to grow and the current limit doesn't provide much scope. They made changes to the alternative Bitcoin implementation Bitcoin XT and proposed Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 101 (BIP 101), which suggests creating a hard fork in the blockchain which can increase the bitcoin block size from existing 1 MB to 8 MB and double every two years.

However, according to recent reports, support for BIP 100, the proposal by Jeff Garzik, is on the rise. It calls for a "free-market-based approach" to security and scalability. He suggested a framework whereby the network may increase the block size by consensus, a lower and less politically risky hurdle than hard fork.

F2Pool, BTCChina, BitFury and several other pools have come out in its support in the past few days.

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, F2Pool administrator Wang Chun said that the Chinese mining pool is also open to other suggestions on raising the block size. However, Chun does maintain that consensus among the Core development team is a requirement, and made it clear that switching to Bitcoin XT is not an option at all.

"We do support big blocks if it is implemented in Bitcoin Core. But we believe the whole 'Bitcoin' XT thing is manipulation," Chun told the magazine. "While the question whether and how to increase the block-size limit is a technical one, the Bitcoin Core and 'Bitcoin' XT issue is political. By introducing 'Bitcoin' XT, Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn are splitting the community. Totalitarianism and dictators cannot co-exist with the free and open-source software spirit."

(This story was first covered by Bitcoin Magazine)