The Bitcoin debate of the year has been about how the blockchain block size matters. Whether to increase block size, how to do it, and when to do it, everyone seems to have an opinion. Now, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who has been mostly silent on the issue, has weighed in with a personal desire for growth, seemingly aligning with other Bitcoin corporate leadership.
To BIP or not to BIP, that is the question
BIP 100, crafted by noted developer Jeff Garzikc is the current favorite amongst miners and the voting majority when it comes to block size upgrades. With BIP100 the power to set the block size limit is transferred from the Bitcoin development community to mining pools, up to a roof of 32MB. BIP101 would have the block size grow to 8MB starting this December, and is widely supported by the Bitcoin corporate ownership. Proposed by Core developers Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen, BIP101 has not gained much traction amongst voters, partially because this proposal was also tied to a fork called Bitcoin XT.
BIP101 had a manifesto that was signed as a vote of confidence by many of the leading businessmen in the Bitcoin community. The Chief Executive Officers include Stephen Pair of BitPay, Peter Smith of Blockchain.info, Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville of Circle, Sam Cole of KNCMiner, John McDonnell of Bitnet.io, Charles Cascarilla of itBit, Wences Casares of Xapo, and Mike Belshe of BitGo.
Brian Armstrong was a glaring omission, but he seems to have aligned with BIP101 on his Twitter account Monday, linking to the document in a Tweet.
We needs a solution in place sooner rather than later. Proposals I've seen are reasonable, low enough risk, now we just need code.
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) October 13, 2015The corporate leaders do not seem to have galvanized any support for BIP101, and the 8MB block size itself has only seen a tepid interest. Maybe Armstrong sees a great influx in Bitcoin use for the holiday season, but the 8MB increase may be too much to ask for at this time.