Segwit Blockage and Roger Ver

Today came exciting news for those desperately waiting on Segwit’s passing and upset with certain bad actors moving against its implementation. The problem is they are blocking the implementation mostly not because it won’t benefit bitcoin, but because they can block it and use that block as a bargaining chip for other implementations they desire, specifically. Prominent bitcoiner Roger Ver was noticeably someone that, publically wasn’t exactly saying he would block Segwit with the mining power he controls via viabtc, but not pledging support until a hard fork date was set in stone or one first.

The problem is that viabtc has enough hash power alone to block the soft fork of segwit which requires 95% of miners signaling to go through. Well today, during an interview on the whaleclub, Roger said that if he was the final one, he would not block the implementation of Segwit, which many are seeing as a success. Hypothetically, now Segwit could be passed, but unfortunately I don’t see the change happening anytime soon. Roger Ver and viabtc were never the real opponents to Segwit, it was always the other Chinese miners.

The current stance for many of the Chinese miners is that they need to update all the code and it will take them a while to do so with some of them citing next spring as a possible time for them to start signaling. While they do technically have to update the base code to start signaling for Segwit and that update could take a while, I am taking the stance that the miners are purposely trying to take as long as possible to get the soft fork through. The reason is the reason why most people act in anything they do, incentives.

Miners currently are earning money from transactions that are on chain, which is why they would want to chose a hard fork upgrade rather than Segwit and keeping the block size smaller. Segwit is the basis for the lightning network, which is a proposed solution that is being worked on that will do off chain transactions and use the main chain for settlement, so it’s kind of like being able to put 100 transactions in one transaction on the main chain. This obviously is not in the miners’ best interest because it takes away the earnings they will receive from transactions. If they could have it their way, they would want to earn money on all those 100 transactions.

Like most people I have no proof that they are willingly stalling the implementation of Segwit, other than that is what I would do if I were running a mining farm. These mining farms are not small time miners like in the old days, they are warehouses filled with millions of dollars worth of hardware. They are essentially corporations and will do whatever they need to do, for the most amount of profit. There is nothing wrong with that, this is how the system was designed and they are taking advantage of it, but it sets a very bad precedent for the future.

Miners are needed to run bitcoin’s proof of work blockchain, but I don’t believe Satoshi had in mind that they would collude to block implementations that much of the user base wants. Even most of those who don’t want Segwit are blocking it for ideological reasons and not because the code is bad. They don’t want bitcoin to become a settlement layer, which I can sympathize with, but Segwit helps us right now with the amount of transactions and the rising transaction fees so why not implement it?

There is still a massive divide amongst bitcoin users, many who were here in the early days falling under the crypto anarchist camp, and those who have come for speculation and as an investment. This could easily be fixed by a hard fork and those who wish to follow a different chain that sticks to the core values of bitcoin, could and those who wish to use it as a settlement layer can follow that, but most people realize that a separation would mean death for the new chain. It may linger on with some market cap like ethereum classic, but there will be no real user base or good developers on the project. Say what you will about core, but they have some of the best developers in the world working on the project.

Overall I am very skeptical of Roger’s new pledge to not block Segwit, and I believe he made that pledge because he knows that it will never get to the point where he will be required to signal because the other major miners won’t. I think ultimately like I wrote in the other article on this topic, that we will be at a standstill unless some sort of compromise is made. I don’t see Segwit getting passed without a hard fork promise set in stone. It’s worth noting that while core has a hard fork on their roadmap, none of the miners actually believe they will go through with it if Segwit is passed. Only time will tell.

• Calaber24p