[2017-07-23] BIP91 Activates While Fork Still Looms in the Backdrop

[jamie.redman1]

On July 22, 2017, at approximately 04:46:31 UTC at block height 477120 — BIP91 was activated on the Bitcoin network. As of this point, if the Segwit2x plan is successful, blocks that don’t signal Segregated Witness (BIP141) will be rejected.

BIP91 has activated on the Bitcoin network after it was enforced by a collaborative effort of mining pools. Over the course of the past 24-hours, nearly every block on the network has been signaling for the protocol change. The threshold for Segwit activation is 80 percent of the network, and 88.2 percent has shown signaling support in the last 24 hours.

Read More Here >>> https://news.bitcoin.com/bip91-activate ... -backdrop/

[GreyWyvern]

I've been studying the various flow charts people have made describing the branching potential options that could happen and most all of them have us on the least contentious branch right now.

Despite that, there is still all this talk of miners giving the option to pre-mine BCC and getting ready for a HF that's going to happen anyway?

Even after reading the article I'm still not sure what exactly is going on. Can anyone explain it to me like I'm five?

[vanityaddrs]

I've been studying the various flow charts people have made describing the branching potential options that could happen and most all of them have us on the least contentious branch right now.

Despite that, there is still all this talk of miners giving the option to pre-mine BCC and getting ready for a HF that's going to happen anyway?

Even after reading the article I'm still not sure what exactly is going on. Can anyone explain it to me like I'm five?

To the best of my understanding at this moment:

Not sure if anyone really knows what's going to happen. The charts are an indicator of what could happen, although predicting it is very difficult.

The prospect of having BTC and BCC is interesting if it all goes ahead OK, but you must control your private keys and get your BTC out of exchanges or other platforms where you might not control your private key before 1 August.

The UASF people believe that a soft fork with majority of nodes from a date rather than a relatively simple flag day could work because it has worked in the past (if miners are on board). The thinking is that if everyone signals support and updates their software and miners can be brought around, then there is less of a risk of the block chain splitting and having two (or more?) currencies, "Bitcoin Legacy/Original" and "Bitcoin New..."

A soft fork requires everyone to upgrade their software, but will not necessarily create a persisting split in the block chain, not right away. The UASF may end up progressing to a 2MB hard fork with a block size of same.

A hard fork breaks the rules immediately, like increasing the block size. It splits the chain for a while to see whether it's adopted and works out. Those who hold BTC will have the same in the new block chain.

So... after saying all that, I think:

UASF wants to force everyone into agreement with SegWit then we will see from there if we get a hard fork and a chain split with bigger blocks.

UAHF wants to create something new in the form of BCC (may as well, if we have more than one main-chain) and are going ahead it seems because this scaling issue has been around for years. Satoshi suggested that a block size could be introduced later at a flag, like a number of blocks, because by then in the future, software not supporting it will already be obsolete and everyone's software will agree.

The best we can do is probably wait and see what happens around 1 August and from thereon.