Hong Kong blocksize debate allows community to reach consensus

 During the last couple of months, there have been various debates in the bitcoin community, such as the blocksize debate, which have managed to divide the community into separate teams. Well, now, it can be safely said that technically, consensus has been reached.This weekend, a couple of key players in the digital currency decided to meet up in Hong Kong and discuss various aspects of the blocksize debate, before finally coming to an agreement. This record represents the first step taken in the right direction since the blocksize debate started.Before stating what has come of the discussions, it’s important to acknowledge that in the past, this debate has caused bitcoin to fall in price. In fact, not long ago, a prominent developer on the Bitcoin Core decided to quit, and also called bitcoin a failure, because his idea of a consensus wasn’t met. When this happened, the currency’s value dropped by 15%, thus stirring up rage in the community. As bitcoin is not controlled by one entity, before any change is made, the group of developers and other prominent members of the community need to all agree on the change, and take full responsibility for what the changes will bring to the coin.With this in mind, during the meeting, there were lots of arguments pointing in each directions of the scale. Should the blocksize be raised drastically, or slowly, to help people accommodate to the change, but also allow more transactions to take place on the blockchain? The consensus reached talks about a software change which will then separately process data present in each block. This way, it’ll not increase the amount of data used towards the limit, while also making sure that the network will be capable of handling more transactions. The catch however is that in this case, the blocksize limit will not be increased at all.Some members of the community tend to believe that the solution is only temporary, and that eventually, the limit will have to be doubled up. The group also proceeded to announce that the software will be released sometime in July, and be activated in July 2017. There is a possibility for the changes to be implemented sooner, but 2017 represents the absolute deadline for the project.What’s interesting is while the event did start out as a debate for the blocksize limit, once consensus was reached, and prior to the discussions regarding this subject, there have been several power struggles, with prominent bitcoin companies trying to gain control over a larger portion of the network.Based on everything that has been outlined so far, what do you personally think about the Hong Kong blocksize debate meeting and the consensus that has been reached? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.