While Bitcoin Unlimited is gaining traction among miners, only a handful of Bitcoin companies are in favor of its bigger block and Emergent Consensus proposal.
Breakdown by Company
The scaling debate in which two predominant Bitcoin improvement proposals, SegWit and Bitcoin Unlimited, are competing for miners’ support is becoming more and more intense.
As the debate escalates, supporters from both sides are now threatening to push for user activated forks (both soft and hard). While Bitcoin Unlimited is considered the most popular proposal in terms of hashing power, a look at the companies that support it or SegWit reveals the exact opposite.
As of this writing, out of the companies listed in Coin Dance, 66 support SegWit and 58 are ready for it. Only 8 companies oppose SegWit.
On the BU side, there are 27 in favor, with 9 companies ready for it. This means that 70% of companies actively support SegWit, compared to 20% for BU. The other 10% are undecided or “unknown”. The companies that support BU include:
- AntPool
- Atlanta Bitcoin
- BitAddress.org
- Bitcoin.com (Saint Bitts LLC)
- BitcoinPlug
- Bitmain
- BTCPOP
- Canoe
- Coinucopia
- GoUrl.io
- Bitcoin WordPress/PHP Gateway
- Keys4Coins
- MrCoin
- Slon BTM
- Bitfire.io
- Bittoku GK
- btc.top
- GBMiners
- Keyois
- Prohashing
- Satoricoin
- ViaBTC
- Bitzillions
- Magnr
- Bitaps.com
- CTY Bitcoin Vietnam TNHH
- OKCoin
- Trezor (Ready)
- Electrum (Ready)
- Bitcoin Wallet for Android (Ready)
- Bifinex (Ready)
- Breadwallet (Ready)
- Gemini (Ready)
- Lamassu (Ready)
- Rocketr (Ready)
It should be noted that even among the 9 companies that are ready for BU, two also support SegWit (Electrum and Trezor) and 5 are ready for SegWit (including Bitfinex and Gemini).
It’s also worth noting that some of the companies that are against Bitcoin Unlimited are not even supporting SegWit. They are simply opposed to BU’s Emergent Consensus.
Meanwhile, 4 of the 8 companies that oppose SegWit and signaling for BU are mining pools.
Who Supports What?
We can see that some predominant exchanges like Poloniex, LocalBitcoins, CoinCheck and others are ready for SegWit, while other names like BTCC, Xapo and Bitso support it.
On the BU side, in addition to Bitcoin.com, Magnr, BitAddress.org, and several BTM providers, the biggest names by far are mining pools such as Bitmain’s Antpool, ViaBTC and GBMiners. However, the independence of these mining pools has recently come under question by the community.
Chinese pool @ViaBTC to launch its overseas #Bitcoin exchange in the second half of 2017, and raised ￥20 million (Round A), led by Bitmain pic.twitter.com/1XCy857SAH
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) April 5, 2017
At the same time, the only major exchanges that support BU also support SegWit, including OKCoin, Bitfinex (ready) and Gemini (ready).
The companies that actively oppose SegWit include 4 mining pools and 4 other small companies that don’t have much bearing in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Conversely, among the companies that oppose BU actively, we find names like BitGo, Vaultoro, Bitsquare, and GreenAddress.
Among the undecided, we still have names like Bitstamp, Bittrex, Bitmex, Kraken, and others.
Bitcoin Businesses Generally Against BU, Hard Fork
The general animosity towards Bitcoin Unlimited can also be observed in the industry letters that have been signed so far. For example, a list of nearly 20 exchanges has signed a hard fork contingency plan in which the BU token would be listed as BTU or XBU.
Canada’s Bitcoin ecosystem has also produced an industry letter in which a large number of economic nodes operators signaled their rejection for BU and proposed industry guidelines for hard forks.
Moreover, the data is also reflected (despite varying statistics depending on the source) by the share of Bitcoin Core (84-91%) nodes among total network nodes compared to Bitcoin Unlimited’s (2-9%).
The conclusion that can be drawn from this data is that despite the growing popularity of Bitcoin Unlimited among mining pools, Bitcoin companies, as well as user nodes, are largely opposed to the Bitcoin Unlimited proposal.
Would you boycott a company based on their support or lack thereof? Let us know in the comment below!
Images courtesy of Coin.dance, Shutterstock, nodecounter.com